December 11, 2019  Source: News Center  
Author: Li Weimiao, Su Yunsheng

In November 2018, JNU signed an agreement with the China Film Association, the Guangzhou Municipal Government Information Office, Zhu Jiang Film Group Co., Ltd., and Bona Film Co., Ltd. to jointly build the Zhu Jiang Film College of Jinan University, the first professional film college in South China.

Its pilot film -- Lingnan Heritage, a documentary reflecting the classic traditional culture of the Lingnan region in the south of China's Nan Mountains -- was released on Nov. 8. Produced by the film college faculty, the film presents the essence of Lingnan culture, including Cantonese opera, Cantonese embroidery, southern lion dance and southern boxing, through group images of three generations of Lingnan culture inheritors. The documentary was broadcast on the Zhu Jiang film channel, attracting extensive reports from People's Daily Online, PhoenixNet and Yangcheng Evening News.
 

（The screenshot of Lingnan Heritage）

JNU's achievements in animation, documentary filmmaking and screenwriting have been emerging in recent years. In 2008, the feature-length documentary Amazing China, directed by Prof. Wei Tie, brought in 481 million yuan at the box office, showing China's development and achievements to the world. The animated film Tan Quan won third prize in the animation support activity of socialist core values organized by the State Administration of Radio Film and Television. The screenplay for Waiting You in Spring has been viewed 10 million times on Tencent Video. The TV documentary The Original Heart aired on the economic channel of Guangzhou Broadcasting Network. And the short documentary Love Without Borders was broadcast during cultural and educational exchange activities on the first anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Panama.

The establishment of Zhu Jiang Film College has set up a larger stage for the development of film art at JNU and its external dissemination. Next year the college will recruit students for majors in dramatic video literature, film and TV directing, and with courses in photography and production, special effects and recording arts to be added in 2021. Thus the college will form a complete training chain from creation to production while gathering human resources to build a film hub in South China.
 

(The signing ceremony of the framework agreement)

Film is not the only unique form of Lingnan culture at JNU, whose College of Art, established in 2004, has trained nearly 1,500 students I the arts of calligraphy and painting. 

In July 2014, the college inaugurated the Chinese Talent (Calligraphy and Painting) Training Base and offered the first Chinese Talent (Calligraphy and Painting) Training Course for Overseas Chinese Cultural Associations. Thirty students from 11 countries, including the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, studied Chinese calligraphy and painting, experienced font copying, heard special lectures and participated in cultural visits at JNU.
 

(Students from the Painting and Calligraphy Training Base showing their work)

JNU plans to fully integrate its cultural resources in literature, history and philosophy to promote the construction of the Institute of Chinese Studies. By taking the institute as the core of heritage and the School of Journalism and Communication, the College of Arts and the College of Chinese Language and Culture as the wings of dissemination, JNU intends to build a complete chain integrating inheritance, teaching, display, production and dissemination to jointly do a better job of passing on and classic Chinese traditional culture and spreading it overseas.