Movie star Nicholas Cage unveiled a new temporary film museum located in Sanya, Hainan province on Tuesday as a warm-up event for the First Hainan International Film Festival.  

Cage, speaking before he cut the ribbon for the Hainan Film Museum, said: "I was blessed to make movies with so many Chinese filmmakers and it has always been an extraordinary experience being here."

He went on: "The museum is celebrating 40 years of Chinese cinema, and what happens with movies is that we can communicate with the world, and it's important that your beautiful culture and your beautiful country can contribute to the world internationally through filmmaking."

He said he would suggest his friends and fellow filmmakers in the United States learn from China on how to develop such a film museum, while both countries should have more exchanges on each other's culture, their stories and filmmaking experiences.

Besides the Hollywood star, the head of the Hainan Provincial Film Bureau Fu Xuanguo, Chinese director Xie Fei and some local officials and film festival organizers attended the event, being cheered by hundreds of onlookers. 

The museum will host an exhibition to highlight outstanding Chinese films and filmmakers from the past four decades since China started its reform and opening up. The public can visit the exhibition for free. 

At the beginning of the reform and opening up process, the annual box office gross in China was less than 1 billion yuan, with an annual production output of only 50 movies. After 40 years of development, the Chinese film industry has entered a golden era. 

In the past 16 years, the size of the Chinese film market has grown to a huge extent to become the second largest in the world. By 2017, the number of productions reached more than 700, and the annual box office total exceeded 56 billion yuan (US$8.1 billion). 

A number of Chinese filmmakers have also left their mark on history, including Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi, Maggie Cheung, Ning Hao and Xu Zheng. 

The museum will present a large number of precious historical film materials and legacies left by this group, and employ advanced technologies such as virtual reality (VR) to bring the audience right into the visual entertainment world before it closes in six months' time. 

According to Fu, the exhibition will review three subjects for every one of the last 40 years: a phenomenal film, an outstanding filmmaker and a significant event for the industry, via photos and videos, in order to vividly track the development history of Chinese films.

He believed the museum would become a new landmark of Hainan province and provide a valuable addition to Hainan's attractions, while the public can feel the charms of the film arts more closely. 

The Hainan International Film Festival opened on Tuesday night, and it is one of the leading projects of the island province in building a free trade pilot zone and a free trade port with Chinese characteristics. 

This year's festival has invited Jackie Chan to be an ambassador, bringing together domestic and international stars, such as Chang Chen, Tao Hong as well as Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche, and Mads Mikkelsen and aims to create a "never ending international film festival," according to the organizers.