Introduction

There has been film festival boom in the Chinese-speaking world in the new century, yet Chinese film festivals remain a blind spot in Film Festival Studies. The chapter locates the desire to fill this gap as the motivation for the volume, and defines Chinese film festivals as both those in the Chinese-speaking world and festivals of Chinese-language cinema elsewhere. It argues that the essays in the book are linked by two core ideas. First, is there anything specific or different about Chinese film festivals? And second, the essays in the book approach film festivals as “sites of translation”—both of cultures and of the idea and practice of the film festival. The chapter also explains the structure of the book and introduces the individual chapters.