A large urban development project aims to develop a new technological and tourist hub there.
Qingdao is a major commercial port in northeastern China. A large urban development project aims to develop a new technological and tourist hub there: the elephant's nape. This operation consists of creating an area with a strong cultural and tourist vocation, allowing for the programming of a film festival. In the spirit of the Cannes Palme d'Or, the elephant's nape of Qingdao symbolizes the city's desire to become an essential city for the seventh art.
Reflection on the genesis of the project.
"The Cannes Film Festival was founded in 1946 in the aftermath of the war and allowed American and European cinema to organize an international festival in the city of Cannes. A resort and tourist town, on the Mediterranean coast with a climate conducive to these activities and festivities. Inside the buildings constructed for the Festival, such as hotels, convention centers, festival palace, restaurants, beaches equipped with bars, parks, gardens, squares and public spaces on which the festival extends with ephemeral structures in stretched canvas, as it grows.
Qingdao is a festival focused on Asia that will gradually open up to the world and thus create one of the Asian international film festivals. It is located on Phoenix Island and has the golden phoenix as its supreme award.
Applying the model or spirit of Cannes to the Qingdao Festival brings two reflections: the city of Cannes is a tourist city in summer and thanks to the Cannes Festival and other festivals that have been added, festivals and seminars, such as Midem, Mapic and Mipim, etc... it extends the tourist season in October and November and starts it in March April May and June with congresses, events and trade shows that frame the twelve days of the May fortnight when the festival is organized. Mipim is a real estate show, Mapic is a commercial real estate show, Midem is a show focused on music and musical expressions. There are medical congresses, electronic congresses, computer congresses and a congress on new technologies and others.
The city of Cannes benefits from an international airport in Nice which is the second largest in France and which allows the whole world to come and attend these events. The same is true for the city of Qingdao.
The city of Qingdao has a climate equivalent to that of Cannes, an economy focused on summer tourism of which the Phoenix Film Festival is the reference point that extends the summer season and will necessarily need to be supported by other festivities, shows and events.
The second reflection is on the structure and equipment necessary to achieve this economic alchemy between festivities, trade shows and congresses and summer tourism. The history of the festival must be written in the landscape and serve as a framework for urban planning. It is a path of discoveries around the history of the city and cinema that will direct and organize the architectural sequence that will lead from the entrance of the elephant's nape district through its large park to the Festival Palace, the heart of this event.
Around the Festival Palace, a convention center must receive the commercial parts, the shows and exhibitors of the different stands. A casino completes the device, a croisette promenade connects the landscape to this ensemble allowing a view through the palm trees on the sea and the new marina created for the occasion. The port and the boats there will participate in the organization of the festival. Indeed, the vocation of large boats, devoted to each major production company or equivalent for other shows, will allow organizing dinners, cocktails, inaugurations, festivities related to the festival along the port. The sea will thus take its place in the organization.
The luxury hotels in this district, distributed along this croisette or the wild coast in eco-luxury hotels, will also participate in the organization of these receptions and parties, allowing these hotel entities to economically extend their economic season after the tourist season.
The main avenue leading to the Convention Center will be called the boulevard of Stars, actors, producers and musicians will be able to print their hand or foot with their names engraved in bronze stars on the sidewalks to become the Champs-Elysées in the Greek term of cinematic and Asian and world art thus ensuring in the bowels of the city the fusion of the two worlds.
Follows the organization of the Cannes Festival as a skeleton that can serve as a framework for the Qingdao Film Festival.
Cannes, which has become the second business tourism city in France, with international air service to 91 connected cities (its airport, Nice, is the second largest in France) is invaded by filmmakers, besieged by thousands of photographers. During these festivities, the opportunity is given to the many producers and distributors present on site to find partners for financing their film projects or to sell works already shot to distributors and television stations around the world. This international film festival taking place every year in Cannes during the second half of May (it lasts 12 days) has allowed this city to equip itself with airport, road, hotel infrastructures, ... allowing to organize and host numerous events, congresses, seminars in very diverse sectors of activity.
Showrooms, restaurants, luxury shopping centers, cinemas spread throughout this district will welcome the public other than professionals to discover the weeks of cinema in the middle of a natural park where commercial structures will identify themselves as fish coming out of the water to return to the sea.
The marine link with the vegetal will be the cement of this new urbanism dedicated to the 7th Art."
A.Bechu
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