While the closing ceremony for the Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF) was the center of media attention Wednesday night, another film festival currently underway this week, the Beijing College Student Film Festival (BCSFF), seems to have fallen by the wayside.

Celebrating its 21st festival, BCSFF has been around much longer than BJIFF, which just held its fourth annual event. However, it seems that in this case "beauty" comes before "age" as the glitzy star-studded BJIFF has stolen the media spotlight from its more academic counterpart.

"It's natural" that media and popular attention have focused primarily on BJIFF, said Zhou Xing, dean of the School of Art and Communication at Beijing Normal University and one of the founders of BSCFF.

"BJIFF is a national-level festival that has a huge amount of capital and energy invested in it. It concentrates all its activities in just one week, so it deserves to be grand and spectacular," he said.

BCSFF, on the other hand, is more focused on longevity, explained Zhou.

"We take things slow but steady," he told the Global Times.

Having survived for over two decades, Zhou said BCSFF has contributed a lot to the improvement of Chinese films and is a successful brand within industry circles.

"There is little need for promotion as the festival is well recognized among filmmakers," said the professor, but adding that it's difficult to say which one is more significant as the two events have different purposes.

One of the judges for this year's BSCFF competition section and having participated in both festivals, Deputy Chair of the Shanghai Film Artist Association Shi Chuan believes that the student-driven film festival has been getting better every year.

He told the Global Times, "The films we have this year, from commercial blockbusters and art films to films that haven't been seen in theaters yet, are all very rich."

Having been a judge at the festival for almost eight years, Shi mentioned that during the festival's early years few stars would make an appearance. However, over the past few years things have begun to change and the festival has garnered more attention from mainstream media. 

When asked if the BJIFF was a threat to the student festival Shi noted, "The two festivals have different audiences and so don't clash with each other."