Alibaba Creates Platform To Foster Arthouse Films1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteLi Jie, senior vice president of Alibaba Pictures and CEO of Alibaba’s ticketing app Taopiaopiao, have officially launched an arthouse film fan interactive online community called Arthouse Land, China.org reported.
“It will provide exclusive customized information, rights and interests for arthouse moviegoers, and we hope to build a special place for fans to assemble, which can serve them better and provide unique content,” Li said.
The announcement was made at the China premiere of “Free Solo,” a 2018 documentary film directed by award-winning documentary filmmaker Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi and world-renowned photographer and mountaineer Jimmy Chin, an American couple of Chinese descent.
Alibaba said it aims to engage more arthouse movie lovers by using big data from Alibaba’s platforms to reach a precise group of users, and by working with the support from the Nationwide Alliance of Arthouse Cinemas, a group formed in 2016 and operated by the China Film Archive and a consortium of theater chains supporting arthouse films.
Li Jie revealed in recent years, the Chinese audience’s demand for arthouse films has been growing. “In the next three years, the number of people watching arthouse films in China will reach 18 million. This huge number will also promote the progress of Chinese domestic films and growth of Chinese audiences.”
Alibaba’s statistics show that the number of annual purchases by arthouse film fans and film reviews written by them are much higher than that of ordinary moviegoers. The increasing activity of arthouse moviegoers will create incremental space for the Chinese film market.
Photo credit: Asia Times
