'Most Chinese movies are total trash,' said one 30-year-old filmgoer, whose girlfriend dragged him to a Beijing cineplex for a 70-yuan, late-night showing of Shaolin, a kung fu blockbuster with a star-studded mainland and Hong Kong cast.

Almost all the five or so movies he sees in cinemas each year are foreign. He buys pirated copies of their domestic counterparts for 10 yuan each.

The mainland is the third largest producer of films in the world, but Joseph Graves, artistic director at Peking University's Institute of World Theatre and Film, says only about a third of the roughly 500 films made each year make any money, with an even smaller percentage making 'significant money'.

In October, only one of the 29 locally produced films screened made any money, according to Manner Movie, a Hong Kong-based company that produces and distributes films on the mainland. Domestic films - 526 of them - generated two-thirds of mainland ticket sales last year. The 20 international movies shown accounted for the other third.

Keen observers of the mainland film industry say competition with Hollywood blockbusters not only threatens ticket sales, but also the overall quality of mainland films.

Professor Emilie Yeh Yueh-yu, director of the Centre for Media and Communication Research at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the mainland was suffering from 'blockbuster syndrome'.

She said mainland filmmakers believed that the only way they could combat Hollywood imports was to produce 'big budget, event films' like Shaolin, featuring costly hi-tech special effects and with credits crammed with big names like Hong Kong pop star Andy Lau Tak-wah and mainland beauty Fan Bingbing.

Movie experts like Yeh say the obsession with star power means that mainland films lack depth. She said smaller movies, sometimes more worthy than their mainstream counterparts, were pushed to the margins by bigger budget films attempting to compete with Hollywood.

Graves said there seemed to be a trend to make films to make money and he feared that 'filmmaking [on the mainland] would become, as it so often is in the West, a business with few artistic considerations'.

But some people point to the steady growth as a sign of huge opportunities to come.

'Bigger investment, inspiration from Western films, technological breakthroughs and more [international] co-production in China have more and more local films showing quality,' said Manner Movie president Frank Lee Chi-kong.

The domestic film industry's market share grew 9 per cent last year and Lee said such growth was an indication of the mainland's potential. Last year 313 new cinemas opened on the mainland, adding 1,533 new screens. There are now 6,200 across the mainland and Lee said it could use 4,000 more.

'To reach 20 billion yuan [in box office takings], I believe the country's screen numbers must grow to 10,000, one-third that of the US,' Lee said.

Yeh said content would play a paramount role in the future of the industry, adding that producing an innovative script was difficult for mainland filmmakers, who walked a tight line between creating provocative films that attracted a broad public and appeasing government censors.

'As long as they work with the party authorities, the market will be open to them,' she said. 'But to be successful, they must carefully tailor their content for the audience on the mainland.'

Yeh estimates only 10 per cent of mainland films are well received by audiences.

Lee agrees that mainland filmmakers must cater better to domestic audiences, saying they should 'study more what the market wants to see and make new attempts to introduce new genres and stories that have never been told'.

Karie Bible, a box office analyst for media research firm Exhibitor Relations, said Chinese films were still an acquired taste in the US.

Bible said China needed to cultivate the international notoriety of its stars if it was ever to compete with Hollywood. 'Jackie Chan is an excellent example of how this crossover can be accomplished,' she said.

'His films and appeal have crossed the globe to a reach a very diverse audience.'

Movie mania

The steady growth of the industry is a sign of the mainland's potential

Last year 1,533 new screens became available to moviegoers in this number of newly opened cinemas: 313