Academy Award-winning director Oliver Stone joined Iranian film master Majid Majidi in Beijing last week as part of the ongoing "Vision Beijing" program.

The two directors will make short films about Beijing to promote the city in leading up to the 2008 Olympic Games.

Stone is one of the biggest names in Hollywood with Oscar credits for Midnight Express (1979, Best Screenplay), Platoon (1986, Best Picture), and Born on the Fourth of July (1990, Best Picture).

His current film World Trade Center opens in Beijing cinemas on November 11 and was excited about the new short-film project.

"Today, many peoples of the world can live in harmony, and China plays an important role," Stone said. "China and the United States are two big countries that should have more interaction. My goal in shooting this Olympic short film also lies in the need to build a harmonious international society."

Stone and Majidi joined Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore (his "Cinema Paradiso" won Oscar in 1990 Best Foreign Film) as three of five international directors who have been invited to shoot a five-minute film about the capital.

Majidi met students from the Central Academy of Drama and spoke about Beijing, the film industry and the Oscars.

He said a five-minute film about a 5000-year civilization was a major task for any filmmaker. "It's a creative idea, but a challenge too. To show 5,000 years of culture in five minutes, it means every minute has to tell 1,000 years of stories," he said.

"It's hard, but I will try to make it. This is the enchantment of film.

"The Eastern world has a bounty of culture and civilization. I think it is the duty of any artist, especially an Eastern artist, to tell their own story."

Since the first visit to Beijing earlier this September, Majid Majidi has been amazed by the city, and especially touched by the older people he met in the parks.

"They are singing and dancing like children and their energy is just like the city, vibrant though ancient," he said.

Before the director met with the students, he sat among the audiences watching his previous work Children of Heaven (1997), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and won the Grand Prix des Americus, Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, Public Prize and FIPRESCI Prize-Special Distinction at the Montreal International Film Festival.

Majidi's films often portray displaced characters in difficult circumstances. His unique way of expressing a child's world will be a factor in his five-minute film and will focus on Beijing's children as a way to tell his story. "I think my work is about bridging the gap between the children's world and the adult world," he said.

As a world-acclaimed director, he told the students to get closer to the people in the real lives.

"Only by understanding their lives, can a filmmaker get much more inspiration," he said.

"We must tell stories about true lives and the real world."

(China Daily November 7, 2006)