The 30th National Television Festival kicked-off on Dec. 20 in the southern province of Can Tho, showcasing the best television works produced by both State-owned television stations and private studios.

The seven-day festival this week will offer more than 700 entries in 10 genres including trailers, that will be making their first appearance at the festival.

"It's good news that trailers will be shown at the festival for the first time. Trailers will make a big contribution to advertising television shows," said Ha Nam, deputy head of the organisation board.

Judges, chaired by Deputy Head of the Cinematography Department Le Ngoc Minh, have already started reviewing the multiple episode category (10-30 episodes), that includes Vietnam Television Film Centre's Silver Swamp, Vietnam Multimedia Corporation's Perhaps Because of Love, and Tran Gia Studio's At the End of the Rainbow.

For the first time, individual prizes for television series will be presented, including Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Cameraman.

The organisation board will also present 35 Gold Awards, 48 Silver Awards and 120 certificates of merit.

Four workshops and two exhibitions will be included as part of the festival. The workshops will discuss how to improve television programmes on ethnic people, children and digital technology television.

Representatives from foreign television broadcasters such as Australia's ABC; China's CCTV; the Republic of Korea's KBS; Japan's NHK and the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) will attend the seminars.

"This festival will focus on workshops which will be of great help to local television stations. We aim to improve the quality of television programmes in the future," said Vu Van Hien, general director of Vietnam Television.

The opening ceremony will broadcast live on VTV's channel 1 on Dec. 20./.