The Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema (NETPAC) is a worldwide organization of 29 member countries. It was created as the result of a conference on Asian cinema organized by Cinemaya, the Asian Film Quarterly, in New Delhi in 1990 at the instance and with the support of UNESCO, Paris.
Headquartered in Singapore, the NETPAC is a pan-Asian film cultural organization involving critics, filmmakers, festival organizers and curators, distributors and exhibitors, as well as film educators. It is considered a leading authority on Asian cinema. In these 18 years it has programmed Asian sections of international film festivals, introduced filmmakers from Asia to the world, brought out a compendium of the existing film infrastructure in different Asian countries, organized seminars and conferences and instituted an award for the Best Asian film at festivals like Singapore, Busan, Jeonju, Kerala, Kazakhstan and Osian's Cinefan among those in Asia; Berlin, Locarno, Karlovy Vary, Rotterdam, Vesoul and others in Europe; at Brisbane in Australia; Hawaii in the US; Antalya in Turkey and Black Nights in Estonia.
The NETPAC Award is given at select international film festivals to promote Asian cinema by spotlighting exceptional films and discovering new talents. Among film makers who have won this highly coveted award are Jia Zhangke and Wang Xiaoshuai from China, Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Rituparno Ghosh and Buddhadeb Dasgupta from India, Marzieh Meshkini and Rakshan Bani-Etemad in Iran, Stanley Kwan and Ann Hui from Hong Kong, Kawase Naomi and Yoichi Sai from Japan, Brillante Mendoza from Philippines, Lee Chang Dong and Kim Ki-duk from Korea, Royston Tan and Boo Junfeng from Singapore, Garin Nugroho from Indonesia, Abdullatif Abdulhamid from Syria, Prasanna Vithanage from Sri Lanka and Abbas Fahdel from Iraq.
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