Director Sam Voutas (fifth from left) poses with the crew of King of Peking. Photo: Courtesy of Sam Voutas

A new comedy inspired by movie contraband in China is set to crack up every movie buff who ever bought a fake DVD. King of Peking tells the tale of a movie projectionist who, to survive in the DVD era, opens up a small business selling pirated copies of films from home in order to keep custody of his son.

To fund the film, the team turned to Kickstarter, the biggest financing platform for creative projects in the world, in what they believe to be the first crowd funding initiative ever released for a feature film in China.

The film's Australian director, Sam Voutas, learned all about copyright infringement after he launched his first comedy Red Light Revolution (2010). Also directed against the backdrop of life in a traditional hutong - the small alley-like streets in Beijing - it tells the story of a young Chinese entrepreneur that stirs up a revolution among friends, family and neighbors when he decides to open a sex shop in the hutong where he lives.

"The concept was sparked by seeing bootlegged copies of my last film [Red Light Revolution] for sale on the streets of Beijing," said Voutas. "It wasn't the copying that interested me as much as the amount of original work the pirates had put into their recreations."

The bootleggers had designed their own posters using a different actor, chosen new fonts and invented fake credits; they even stamped their own holographic logo on the top of the DVDs.

"It was as though I had a doppelganger out there somewhere, struggling with the same distribution and marketing challenges I was facing for the very same film."

Piracy: loving and hating it



"DVD! DVD!" - the selling cry and the success of DVD bootleggers on every corner may very well soon be to an end. The same way that VHS left projectionists who took itinerant cinema to China's countryside out of a job, cyber pirates and torrenting websites are driving bootleggers out of business. However, it was also due to copyright infringement that independent movies and everything from cult films to Polish TV series became available to the Chinese audience in the 1990s.   

"Piracy, love it or hate it, has totally changed movie and music culture in Beijing," Voutas wrote recently. "Even some of China's best independent filmmakers admit that piracy not only introduced them to cinema, but also brought their own films to a wide audience."

Voutas spent several years growing up in China, witnessing these transformations. "It was the introduction of videodiscs in the 90s that completely changed the status quo of entertainment. You went from a system where entertainment options were highly limited, where only a handful of carefully selected international films would get a release, to a situation where movies from all over the world could be distributed to Chinese audiences through VCDs and DVDs. It completely changed the cinema landscape," said Voutas, who believes the country is still feeling the effects of this revolution today.

A true-to-life story



The group turned to Kickstarter since an attempt to get traditional financing or to distribute the movie in the mainstream circuit could compromise the creative freedom of a script like King of Peking.

Jane Zheng, the film's producer admitted that she was worried that the film wouldn't be able to receive approval through regular channels.

"The story is set in a year when many were laid off from their supposedly secure government jobs, from the so-called iron rice bowl system, [and were] facing a similar situation to the one our main character deals with in the movie," Zheng explained.

Zheng confirmed the script has not yet been submitted for approval and hopes that, given how frequently the criteria for official restriction changes, the script may be taken for what it truly is: A good story about the personal struggle of a man, a Chinese father, who is learning to grow up and deal with the challenges that life lays before him.  

Heading online



King of Peking will be released in the form of a wei dianying, or micro-film, arriving directly online instead of movie theatres.

"The Internet is more of a free ground and with the rapid change of viewing habits, that is where good content can spread faster and more cost efficiently," said Zheng.

The team still remembers how careful they were not to give out copies of the film to prevent any fakes from hitting the streets when they took Red Light Revolution on tour to screen in small venues around China.

"When we finally did release on DVD, we were on international torrenting sites within 24 hours," said Voutas, noting that everywhere around the world, and not only in China, filmmakers are now having to change their game plans for how they release movies.

"I believe film is going in the same direction as the music industry. For us, it then makes live events so much more important. As technology makes art available at the click of a button, going on tour becomes essential to sustaining a viable business model. I really see it less as a situation of trying to stop piracy, which I think is impossible until distribution avenues improve, and more about learning to adjust," he added.

Funding is the biggest challenge for an indie movie. Zheng said that this is the main reason why she is exploring new avenues like crowd funding. "The concept is quite new in China but I see great potential in it." Zheng believes that a story about a guy that could be anybody's neighbor, and faces mundane issues, will resonate, and captivate backers as well as the audience.

King of Peking has managed to gather support from 170 backers by mid-March 2015, gathering $19,445 of a $48,738 pledge initially launched on Kickstarter.

Voutas and Zheng will have to wait until the end of March to see if the campaign closes successfully.