TV festival jury panel meet with press to discuss content

Ti Gong

The jury panel of the 24th Shanghai TV Festival Magnolia Awards met with the press on Wednesday, sharing insights on what makes great TV dramas, documentaries and animations.

The chairman of the drama award category is Chinese screenwriter Liu Heping, who’s known for “Yongzheng Dynasty,” “Li Wei the Magistrate 1,” “The Sea in One Hundred” and “All Quiet in Peking.”

“The winning works should have the qualities of deep thinking, exquisite making and artistic value,” Liu said.

Liu is joined by Chinese director and producer Gao Qunshu, actress Xu Fan, screenwriter, director and producer Xu Jizhou and actor, director and screenwriter Zhao Lixin.

“Drama series must have the feelings, expressions and uniqueness that can touch the audiences' hearts — the audience must be able to relate to the stories and characters,” said Gao.

Lee Mason, drama commissioning executive at UK PSB Channel 4, and Steven Long Mitchell, American writer, producer and director, are judging the foreign drama series for this year’s best foreign TV film and series awards.

Nick Fraser, British documentary producer, is the chairman of the documentary jury panel. He commented that the Chinese documentaries they have watched were excellent, and that Chinese audiences should also reach out to watch more documentaries about China that are made by foreign producers and directors.

Tetsuaki Matsue, Japanese documentary director, stresses that documentaries are about the facts, about how cameras can capture humanity and the most realistic stories.

Peng Hui, Chinese documentary director, emphasized that Chinese documentaries have a narrow choice of themes when compared to foreign productions, which will change as society does.

Kay Benbow, producer and independent consultant from the UK and chairman of the animation jury panel, spoke about the fact that some of the nominated animation works have been around for a long time.

“It’s finding new ways to tell stories. We have series in the UK which have remained because they are very popular,” Benbow said.

Having worked for young audiences all her career, Benbow stressed that producing animation is about helping children understand the world, so that they can be confident, happy and better people for the future.

“I think there’s a lot of sharing and conversations that need to be done, so we can understand all the different cultures,” said Hasnul Hadi Samsudin, vice president of creative content and technologies of Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation.

The Magnolia Awards will be announced on June 15.