The 2024 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival opens on Nov 13 in Xiamen. [Photo/VCG]

The 2024 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival, which features China's top film awards ceremony, opened on Nov 13 in Xiamen, East China's  Fujian province.

The four-day event will feature a variety of film activities, including the 37th China Golden Rooster Awards red carpet and awards ceremonies scheduled for Nov 16.

Notably, this year's festival also features multiple film exhibition events, including the Golden Rooster Mainland Film Section, Golden Rooster Chinese-language Film Section, and Golden Rooster International Film Section. These sections aim to showcase the outstanding achievements of Chinese-language films over the past year, building a platform for exchange between Chinese cinema and the world.

The festival's opening day saw a whirlwind of activity, highlighted by the signing of 175 cultural and film industry projects. These agreements, amounting to 31.63 billion yuan ($4.36 billion), cover a wide array of formats, including film production, music, and copyrights.

The International Film and Television Copyright Service Platform was launched during the ceremony. The platform aims to accelerate the globalization strategy of Chinese film and television intellectual property, introduce internationally renowned film and television IP copyrights, and deepen international cultural exchanges and cooperation in the film and television industry.

In recent years, Xiamen has placed high importance on the development and prosperity of the cultural industry. It continues to focus on showcasing high-quality culture to build a new image of Xiamen as a "cultural center, city of arts, and island of music".

In 2023, the total operating income of the cultural industry in Xiamen reached 228.66 billion yuan, with value-added accounting for approximately 5.4 percent of the city's GDP, making it a pillar industry. 

Since 2019, when Xiamen became the host of the China Golden Rooster Awards, the city has been utilizing the festival to promote the rapid development of the film and television industry.

Driven by the festival, Xiamen has attracted over 3,200 cultural and film companies and a large number of projects to settle in the city, forming a well-rounded film and television industry chain. Over the past five years, the city's film and television enterprises have grown at an average annual rate of 10.8 percent, with operating income surpassing the national average at a 14 percent annual rate of increase.