Frederick Wiseman Joins hands with Alibaba to Support China’s Documentary Film

Youku and Alibaba Pictures, the digital platform and the film company under Alibaba have launched the Iron Facts Documentary Support Program (IF Program) to provide comprehensive supports to documentaries and to offer guidance through pitching, production to promotion. Documentary guru Frederick Wiseman joins the program as the Life Honorary Chairman.

IF Program targets at mandarin documentarians, calling for film projects with a length of over 70 minutes at the research, shoot and post production stage.

Jie Li, the head of the program, who is also the Vice President of Alibaba Group and the President of Alibaba Pictures, said: "In recent years, Alibaba Pictures has spared no effort to promote theatrical releases of documentary films in China, for example, Free Solo, invested by Alibaba Pictures achieved a great success in the country. Alibaba hopes to build a platform for creative talents, platforms and the industry, in a bid to further develop the documentary films in China. "

The 2020 IF program include training camps, pitching forums and master classes. The entry deadline is October 25. The list of selected projects will be announced in December.

Thedocumentary Hope Frozen will be launched on Netflix on September 15

Netflix announced the documentary Hope Frozen  has been translated into 31 languages and will be launched globally on September 15.

Funded by Chinese youth-skewing online platform Bilibili, It tells the story of a Thai Buddhist and PhD in laser science lost his two-year-old daughter, Einz, to cancer. Unable to cope with her death, he and his wife made the difficult and almost unfathomable decisionto make Einz the youngest person in the world to be cryopreserved, in hopes she will one day be reborn in a new body. The couples now face negative media attention and criticism from religious and spiritual groups.

Hope Frozen, premiered at GZDOC,  was also nominated as the “Best First Feature Documentary Award " of the GZDOC 2019 Golden Kapok Award.