Busan (ANTARA News) - The permanent main venue of the annual Busan International Film Festival (BIFF), one of Asia`s largest film festivals, will open to the public in a ceremony on Thursday, local officials said.

The opening of Busan Cinema Center comes a week before the film festival kicks off its nine-day run.

The center, which is located along the riverside of Busan, a southern port city, located 453 kilometers southeast of Seoul, has a super-sized curb shape roof with an image of rolling waves.

The Busan city government said it plans to register the roof, 2.5 times larger than a soccer stadium, in the Guinness Book of Records.

Built on 30,217 square meters of land with 167.8 billion won (US$142 million), the facility is composed of three main buildings -- one for housing a multipurpose performance hall, a medium-sized theater, two small theaters, an office building for the BIFF organizing committee and a 4,000-seat outdoor theater, where the opening and closing ceremonies of the film festival will be held annually from this year.

It took three years to complete the center.

The opening ceremony is scheduled to be held on Thursday night with about 800 movie industry people and high-ranking government officials in attendance, Yonhap reported.

(A045/H-AK)

Editor: Suryanto
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