Visual treat for nature lovers

A dozen Wildscreen award-winning or nominated titles were screened in Beijing Oct 28-30. The event was part of a festival, which will now move to Shanghai. Xu Fan reports.

For Chinese wildlife photographer Xi Zhinong, seeing The Blue Planet, a documentary series created and premiered by the BBC, was a turning point. Xi first saw the film in 2002, when he became the first Chinese to win the TVE award at the prestigious Wildscreen Festival - an event started in 1982 and hailed as the "Green Oscars" - in Bristol, England.

The moment he saw the biennial festival's biggest winner that year - a film regarded as the first comprehensive production on the world's oceans - the naturalist from Yunnan province realized that China had a long way to go to catch up.