Press Center, a forking path where infinite time and space tangle, a troubadour’s backyard garden, and a jungle of copious instantaneous information, is the place where you can find the volunteers of the Publicity & Promotion Department, who are the fairies swaying with the spring breeze of Beijing.
Where is the Press Center?
On the morning of April 14th, the Press Conference of the 15th Chinese American Film Festival, which took place at the Jewel Hall of Beijing Hotel, was attended by hundreds of media. Here lies the Press Center of the Beijing International Film Festival (BJIFF), where 1669 journalists of 591 media from home and abroad have made their interview appointments and press conferences since April 11th. The volunteers of the Publicity & Promotion Department are also here to facilitate the work of the media.
The media personnel need to receive their identification documents and make event appointments with their registration information here. Every day from 9 am to 7 pm, the volunteers of the Publicity & Promotion Department provide help and guide them to receive their identification documents.
“My daily work is to make contact with the media, guide people to make registration and answer their questions. I started my work two days ago, and so far everything is going well in general, but sometimes I need to adjust according to the situation. For example, when we receive guests who are not invited, we must check their identity carefully to make sure that nothing goes wrong. I remember that on my first day, we had to categorize and check more than 1300 media cards. This required us to be more careful to avoid any mistakes.”
—Xue Chi (Volunteer)
In these days, the volunteers of the Publicity & Promotion Department not only communicated with the foreign media in English, made appointments and informed the media by phone of event information but also took charge of the logistics support of the media at the opening ceremony. In yesterday’s grand opening ceremony of the BJIFF, the volunteers were busy making phone calls to ensure the dining of the media personnel.
From tomorrow onwards, the Theme Forum of the BJIFF, together with the press conferences of numerous shortlisted films, will take place one after another. Therefore, the volunteers will undertake more reception and guidance work on the spot.
“I consider good manners very important for volunteers. Since we make contact with many guests and media personnel, we shall first of all work with a passionate attitude and try to help people wholeheartedly as much as possible. This is what I hope to achieve.”
—Ma Yunping (Volunteer)
“In the Publicity & Promotion Department, our daily workload is in effect quite heavy, but after working for two days, I hold that the most important thing is to pay attention to details. The work we are doing is barely complicated, but we need to pay special attention to details in many cases, including not only our major tasks such as contacting and guiding the media and guests but also some temporary tasks of the Press Center which require us to be on standby. We also need to deal with unexpected situations faced by the guests and the media personnel.”
—Zhang Kaige (Volunteer)
As the Beijing Film Panorama is in full swing, other great events of the BJIFF is going on in the meantime. Ernest, attentive, passionate and responsible, the volunteers are busy with their work every day at the Press Center. This is the Publicity & Promotion Department of the Beijing International Film Festival.