Just as more believers gravitate to this former New Yorker and student of mass media, communication theory and sociology, Sallade thinks the time may have come to step aside. James Foster, Sallade’s right hand organizer, reminds us, “Shanghai is the center of finance, Guanzhou the hub of manufacturing, and Beijing the heart of culture, not just the hub seat of government.” From this base they have won for BIMF the support of various companies, the cultural divisions of the embassies of Germany, the Czech Republic, Israel, Austria and New Zealand, and most important, of different government departments in China. As far as Sallade is concerned, the festival has found its feet: “It’s important that the government be involved, important that a Chinese person run it now and locals be involved. Why shouldn’t Beijing have a major international film festival? It should never depend on just one person,” Sallade asserts.

The 2010 festival nevertheless had its troubles. A major venue backed out, some films had to be rescheduled, and the website dismantled and redesigned just days before the launch party. Reliance on club venues was still heavy. Challenges in the art world, especially events that rely on volunteers, grants and prayers, are not new anywhere in the world. Add to that a foreign country and language, a demanding bureaucracy covering the film arts, and a city where cultural offerings are basically on tap, and you are looking at challengers who have to muster serious fortitude and determination – some might say obsession. Sallade will be stepping aside from a lead role for the 2011 fest, preoccupied with new challenges and fresh struggles in the film world: like Wellendorf, he intends to produce film scripts he likes.

The first, with any luck, will be Wild China Chase with his Swedish friend Jimi Anderson, another dogged pursuer of screen dreams in China. Anderson is a Chinese TV idol and a star in the ubiquitous CCTV series Modern Family who is often recognized in the street (and occasionally still signs an autograph). Another series with CCTV is shooting now and will be released in December. But the handsome young actor has another life; six years ago he wrote a script for his own series in English that swiftly morphed into a feature film script. The plot sounds like a set up for the usual boy-meets-girls tensions, but it is also a kung fu drama and love story with a healthy dose of comedy, and the action occurs in various locations across the mainland. Anderson describes it part Indiana Jones, part Golden Child. A Chinese production with a foreign leading man is as rare as hen’s teeth in China, in fact he can’t think of when it’s been done before. Anderson hopes it will be a co-production with Sweden, America and China.

The only attempt Anderson made to return to his homeland and start his own company, Fire Dragon Flicks, depressed him. In China there was more energy, more will, more money, and he missed Beijing terribly. “Sweden is really not for people,” he concluded. Anderson strikes you as someone who could get comfortable anywhere, something we might put down to his unconventional upbringing in an artist’s commune. He went academic with acting in Sweden, and then took a formal one year “sampler” program at the Beijing Film Academy. His goals here are not just to make a living and pursue his craft; he wants to help China somehow with its environmental challenges. He supports charities too, at the end of June he was auctioned off as a date in the Charity Bachelor Auction for the benefit of the Tse Reh Orphanage for ethnic minorities. Anderson and Sallade collided about the time of his return, and the latter offered to translate Wild China Chase into Chinese, polish it up, and do the production planning. They are chasing 20 million dollars now for this private venture.

Meanwhile, cineastes come east, and they go west. Professor Duan Jia may be enraptured by the silver screen too, but the role of impresario is not for her. Among the first class of graduates from the Beijing Film Academy (1983), her career is distinguished for, among other things, writing the retrospective Animation World History and winning six awards for her short animation film Lotus (2005). US distribution for the film was assured, as were seats on panels in Hollywood and other US cities to speak and lecture on Chinese achievements in the genre. Last spring she left for Canada on the invitation of Concordia University in Montreal, home of the country’s National Film Board, once a hot house for animation shorts that used to clean up at the Academy Awards in the 60’s and 70’s. She returns this fall to continue research at the NFB, and Peter Sallade was instrumental in making that connection for her. As long-time CCTV director of animation, Duan got well connected herself in the industry, and has in turn supported the BIMF by inviting exhibiting film directors and producers to lecture at the Beijing Film Academy.

The Beijing Film Academy is one of the world’s finest film schools, according to critic Mark Cousins. Giving a talk on his book Widescreen: Watching. Real. People. Elsewhere, in Beijing this spring, he pointed out that this didn’t happen on the basis of creative genius, but rather owes a lot to a forward-thinking government. Creating what will soon be the world’s biggest digital archive for film, China is digitizing 1,000 features a year. The state may get some criticism, Cousins admits, “But their “ability to act strategically, to steer change in the film world when digital and delivery conveyance demands it, is surely exciting for film pragmatists in America and Europe. It is possible to imagine that by 2050 for example, China could be the R&D center of global film.”

C