Yesterday the Tudou Video Festival kicked off with a panel about online video and about the main differences between video in China and the West. A panel consisting of Frank Yu (former Microsoft games exec & a.o. Gamasutra blogger), Gary Wang (Tudou CEO), Gang Lu (Kuukie.com, OpenWeb.Asia & Mobinode.com), and David Wolf (SiliconHutong blogger & CEO of Wolf Group Asia) discussed everything about online video: from content to censorship and from measurements to monetization. Christine Lu moderated the discussion and also streamed it live on the web. The video itself will be edited and put online soon, will post a link here once it’s up.

Several people were live tweeting the event, among others David Feng (famous for being the fastest Tweeter in the world, I watched him live in action as he was sitting next to me) and Will Moss (aka Imagethief). Click on their names to check out their Twitter streams. Tudou put together a couple of tweets from the event that show some of the highlights in this Shareslide presentation.

After the panel was over a couple of the best finalists for tonight’s video festival were shown. Also the directors of some of these films were there to talk about how they made their films. There were some excellent animations such as the short Bao-Qiang Fighting Sushi Man film and the 20-minute action filled The Adventure of Li, Xian-Ji. A more controversial one was It seems to rain (subtitled in English), about a high school boy finding out and eventually accepting that he is gay. Not something you will find on TV in China!

My favorite film Lost in Paradise by Beijing-based director Nan Zhou was also partly shown. It’s a very low budget movie, but with a great story line and good acting – and for non-Chinese viewers also with English subtitles. The story: 10 psychiatric patients are being transported in a van to the hospital. On the way the van driver makes a stop to see his girlfriend, a hooker, but forgets to lock the van. When he returns all the patients are gone… In order to cover up his mistake he then sets up a plan to kidnap the first 10 customers of his girlfriend that evening. Of course that leads to some complications. The 22-minute film is embedded below or you can see it here on Tudou.