ACROSS China, up-and-coming filmmakers are increasingly leveraging the power of the Internet when it comes to producing, marketing and distributing their works. By the same token, many of the leading video-sharing platforms are eager to cultivate online talent if it helps them get in front of the country’s estimated 642 million Internet users.

This reality will be on full display at the 18th Shanghai International Film Festival, which runs from tomorrow to June 21. This year, the festival will include screenings of numerous Internet films — a wide-ranging term which typically refers to small-budget films funded by, or created for, online platforms such as Youku or Tudou. The term can also refer to films based on popular online games, novels or short movies.

The film festival will include a bevy of forums, workshops and events designed to bring local online talent into closer contact with established industry professionals.

This platform for collaboration comes as China’s film market undergoes explosive growth. Last year, China’s domestic box-office take grew 36 percent to 29.6 billion yuan (US$47.8 billion). In the first quarter, movie ticket sales surged 40 percent year-on-year to 10 billion yuan.

“The Chinese film market has never had it so good,” says Hu Jinjun, director of the Shanghai Municipal Administration of Culture, Radio, Film and TV, the government body organizing the festival. “The flourishing film industry in China is also attracting a new wave of Internet-led investors and talent. This has encouraged us to provide a platform for business incubation and crossover film cooperation during the festival.”

A highlight of this year’s festival is the Internet Film Carnival, a multi-day event slated to bring together veterans from the online and traditional film worlds. Representatives from major online video content platforms such as LeTV.com, Tencent and Youku will also be on hand to discuss important developments related to their businesses.

Internet film forums and meetings with venture capital companies will be arranged too, offering promising filmmakers the chance to be discovered and pitch their projects.

For viewers, the festival will feature an exhibition of popular Internet films, including the superhero flick “A Hero or Not,” the animated film “Roco Kingdom 4” and the romance “Cafe, Waiting, Love.”

The action-packed romp “A Hero or Not” marks the directorial debut of actor and host Dong Chengpeng. The film tells the story of a super star who falls from grace after an accident. Action legend Jean-Claude Van Damme also makes an appearance.

“Roco Kingdom 4” is adapted from Tencent’s popular series of online adventure games. Since launching the namesake series in 2010, the community which surrounds these games has developed legions of followers and fans, many of which are also devotees of the film franchise.

“Cafe, Waiting, Love,” based on a novel by well-known Taiwanese Internet writer Giddens Ko, is a romantic story about people waiting for love. Ko, known for his novel and film “You Are the Apple of My Eye,” is also the film’s producer.

Additionally, viewers can use their smartphones during certain film showings to post comments on the side of the screen, a practice known as danmu.

Talent and funding

According to Luo Li, vice president of China Reading Limited, more and more online authors are getting involved in writing scripts for film and television.

“China still lacks good scriptwriters,” says Luo. “We are eager to offer a wide platform for our gifted Internet writers to create film stories that use diversified subjects and styles. We can also provide writers with special training.”

Famed Internet writer Yue Guan, known for his popular historical work “Back to the Ming Dynasty,” is one such author who is now gravitating toward scriptwriting.

“Compared with writing prose fiction, film script writing requires a lot more skill to build strong characters, create dramatic conflict and tell a good story within a very short length of time,” he says. “I’m now reading some impressive scripts and talking with A-list scriptwriters to develop such skills and abilities.”

Yue echoed Luo by saying that, in his view, Chinese screen writers still lag their Western peers in terms of creativity and dedication. Nevertheless, he believes that writing quality will become increasingly important in film and TV as audiences become more discerning.

Company participation

Organizers of the Shanghai International Film Festival recently announced a three-year strategic partnership agreement with Alibaba Group. The deal will see Alibaba’s Yulebao, the e-commerce company’s online crowd-funding arm, serve as the festival’s official interactive entertainment partner. Meanwhile, the movie ticketing unit of Taobao, known as Taobao Dianying, will serve as the festival’s official ticketing arm.

In 2014, one million donors invested a combined 330 million yuan (US$53 million) through Yulebao into 12 development-phase entertainment projects, including films and variety shows, making Yulebao one of the largest investment platforms of its kind.

During the festival, lucky Yulebao users will have a chance to meet and interact with their favorite idols at special screenings.

Of course, the new online resources aren’t just benefiting emerging filmmakers. A growing number of established directors are also using Internet tools on projects of their own. Among them is Hong Kong director Tsui Hark.

Hark recently joined LeTV’s creative science and technology lab to explore new cinematic skills and techniques. The director’s achievements and discoveries will be shared via a mobile app offered by LeTV.

Zhang Zhao, CEO of LeVision Pictures, the film production subsidiary of LeTV, notes that compared with traditional film production, today’s filmmakers can use the Internet to tap specific market demands.

“Film projects with huge market potentials can be discovered and selected through big data analysis and our interactions with Netizens,” Zhang says. “This is also a distinctive advantage of the online film industry because we respect our users and know what they want from a movie.”

Emerging genre

In China, Internet films are rapidly becoming a genre in their own right.

Last year, the success of small-budget comedy “Old Boys: The Way of the Dragon,” signaled to many that Internet films could make the jump from smartphones and tablet computers onto the big screen.

The movie is based on a 2010 short online film made by Xiao Yang and Wang Taili. The film, about the misadventures of two men looking for success, quickly racked up over 80 million views after being posted on Youku. Youku later took part in the short film’s feature-length adaptation, underscoring the platform operator’s ambition to create its own original content. The film eventually pulled in 200 million yuan at local box offices.

But despite the new opportunities of the Internet age, experts see new challenges for the film industry as well.

Film critic Shi Chuan, vice president of the Shanghai Film Association, notes that while developing a new Internet vision, domestic film makers should continue to create diverse content and not let their quest for profit compromise the artistic value of their films.