Student festival begins

A total of 80 films made by students from more than 40 countries and regions have been chosen for the Beijing Film Academy's 8th International Student Film and Video Festival.

They were picked from more than 700 entries, says Zhang Huijun, president of the academy.

Sixty of the selected 80 are films made by foreign students while the rest come from the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan.

Eight short films from Israel, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, China, France, the Czech Republic, and Bulgaria were screened at Sunday's opening ceremony. They included fiction, documentary and animation.

The week-long festival has been held annually since 2001, except in 2002 when it was suspended for financial reasons.