Shanghai Audiovisual Archive Weng Haiqin
Since its inception, the active image has carried an important function of recording human history and culture. After the film's first screening in 1895, the Lumière brothers recruited hundreds of photographers with great fanfare and sent them around the world to screen and shoot films, and dozens of countries have since had films and left the earliest images. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Edison's active photography department also spanned the Americas, Asia and Europe. After them, the French banker Albert Kahn's "Earth Archives" project more clearly proposed the purpose of recording the history and culture of mankind through images.
After the film was introduced to China at the end of the 19th century, it soon became an important tool for people from all over the world to record the culture and life of this country. Early overseas videographers included photographers, missionaries, diplomats, businessmen, travelers, explorers, journalists, and documentary filmmakers. In the past few decades, the filming purpose of the filming has changed from individuals to institutions, from amateur records to professional creations, and the film types have become more and more mature from travel clips to newsreels and documentaries, which has not only become the enlightenment of Chinese documentary films, but also left a large number of precious historical materials.
In the history of modern China, Shanghai has become the most dynamic metropolis in China because of its unique geographical location and social form of five directions, so it is also the place where overseas filmmakers pay the most attention to the camera, and documentary films about Shanghai have survived in different eras. The author has been working in the Shanghai Audio-Visual Archive for many years, and together with the historical image collection and research team, I have accumulated image memories about Shanghai bit by bit, and tried my best to enrich the image pictures about her. Taking advantage of the 126th anniversary of the birth of world cinema, this article summarizes a number of representative documentary films recorded by overseas filmmakers to record the cityscape of Shanghai since the birth of the moving image, focusing on the Shanghai image at the beginning of the birth of the film, shanghai under the lens of Soviet filmmakers, and the classic documentaries filmed by overseas filmmakers before and after the reform and opening up.
The earliest moving image in Shanghai
At present, the earliest moving image of Shanghai can be seen from the photography team of Edison.
Inventor Thomas Alvar Edison is known for his inventions of incandescent light bulbs, phonographs and cinema cameras. Edison Manufacturing Co. was founded in 1889, initially in the battery business, and in 1894 film was incorporated into the business, including filmmaking and the sale of cinema projectors with its patented technology. On August 31, 1897, the Edison Manufacturing Company patented its new active film camera. Since then, James White, 25, head of its active film camera division, has embarked on a 10-month round-the-world shoot trip with photographer Frederick Blechynden. They first funded the railroad company to go down to the western United States and Mexico.
On February 3, 1898, the two set sail from San Francisco on the SS Coptic ocean vessel of the East-West Steamship Company for the Far East. The ship was badly damaged by a typhoon on its way and did not reach Yokohama, Japan, until February 24. After a short stopover, they arrived in Hong Kong on March 6 to shoot in Hong Kong, Macau and Guangzhou. They arrived in Shanghai to shoot in early April, and soon went to Nagasaki and Yokohama in Japan, and returned to Hawaii on May 9. As a result of this filming trip to the Far East, 25 short films were finally copyrighted, of which 13 were filmed in China, covering the scenery, transportation, and social activities of Shanghai, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macao.
The original film of these moving images has long ceased to exist due to its age and the deterioration and destruction of the nitrate negatives. Fortunately, in order to register the copyright at that time, Edison made the early film frame by frame and made a paper copy to keep it. The short films we see today are recovered from these paper remakes after the 1950s, and although the images are not sharp enough, they are still the earliest moving images of China that can be seen so far. In 1910 Edison Manufacturing Company reorganized and renamed Thomas A. Edison, until 1918, when it terminated all of its film business, so that the films we see now use this name mostly recorded.
James White and Frederick Blechynden shot Three clips of Shanghai: Shanghai Street View I and II, and Shanghai Police, each lasting around 30 seconds. The Location of Street View was in the area of today's Bund Source, where the camera was facing the road south of the second-generation Waibaidu Bridge (then known as the "Garden Bridge"). It can be seen that the moving image is still in infancy at that time, and the photographer only records the fixed camera position and the scene. However, because the filming is a traffic artery, the camera is full of people coming and going, and the information is very rich: pedestrians, unicycles, bicycles, rickshaws, and horse-drawn carriages have appeared, and the means of transportation are moving on the left, and the Western buildings on the north bank of the Suzhou River can be faintly seen in the distance. Street View II was shot almost in the same location, but the camera changed angle slightly, and a vague image of the Monument erected by the British in honor of Margaret Margaret, Deputy Consul of the Chinese Embassy in China, could be seen next to the bridge. Several foreigners in suits on rickshaws took off their hats to greet them as they passed by the camera, as if they were no strangers to the new thing of the moving camera. "Shanghai Police" filmed the scene of the police of various countries in the Shanghai Concession lining up to patrol, the mounted police and infantry officers wearing uniforms and setting off in different directions, it seems to be going to perform important tasks, and some onlookers can be seen on the right side of the picture.
These early short films, on the one hand, were travel propaganda films produced by Edison to introduce the scenery of the world to American audiences, and on the other hand, they were also an indirect product of the expansion of the American economy into the Far East, and it was precisely because of the opening of the American-Far East steamship route and the steamship company's funding of the film company that the Cultural Exchange between the East and the West through moving images was realized. More than 120 years later, looking at these pictures, we can still feel the urban appearance and vivid atmosphere of Shanghai in that era so truly.
In addition to Edison's short films, there are two precious images from the late Qing Dynasty that are worth mentioning. The first is Nanjing Road and the Bund in 1901, filmed by Joe Rosenthal, a photographer at Warwick Trading Co in the United Kingdom, filming fixed camera positions and scenes, photographing pedestrians on the streets of Shanghai, such as British women riding bicycles, Indian patrols, German soldiers, etc. The second is the image of Shanghai taken by the French Baidai Brothers Company from 1909 to 1911, which captured the market and pedestrians, vendors, wheelbarrows in the area of Shanghai's old city, as well as the earliest Hongkou Triangle Vegetable Market, the City God Temple Tea House and so on. It can be seen that after more than ten years of development, the scenes and shots recorded in the film at this time have obviously been enriched a lot.
"Through China" - A Facet of Chinese Society in the Early Years of the Republic of China
American director Benjamin Brodsky has left many legendary stories in the history of Chinese cinema. The Russian-Jewish businessman was so business-minded that in 1909 he founded the Asia Film and Drama Company in Hong Kong, one of the earliest cinematography agencies in China. Between 1912 and 1915, Broschi traveled from Hong Kong along the coastline north to Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shanghai, Suzhou, Nanjing, Tianjin and Beijing. He used film film to record the cityscapes, city customs, people's lives and cultural customs of various parts of China at that time, and subtitled him to express his perception of China and Chinese, and made a film "A Trip Through China", which is the most complete and longest early moving video record of China.
Released in 1917 by the American Supreme Feature Films Company, the film is 108 minutes long, of which the Part filmed in Shanghai lasts for more than 20 minutes. Broschi noticed that at the beginning of the 20th century, the Western world had begun to rely on steam and electricity, and in China, which had just ended the rule of the feudal dynasty, manpower was still the main productive force, so he captured many shots of low-level laborers who survived by manual labor: coolies pulling rickshaws and wheelbarrows, carpenters, dock workers, poor water families, construction workers building roads, ramming, prisoners serving sentences doing hard labor... Through the lens, we can see the faces of the various common people's lives observed by Broschi, and from the sharp differences between these lenses and the lives of the rich, as well as the strong contrast with the prosperity of the concession, we can see the subjective expression of the photographer's social class differences in Shanghai. In the subtitles of the film, Brockie often makes a black humorous comment on what he sees of China from the perspective of an American, which also conveys the huge gap in economic and cultural development between China and the United States at that time.
In addition, the film also filmed the appearance of Shanghai after the typhoon hit in 1915 and the execution of prisoners on the street, documenting the political tensions in the country at that time. There are many historical footage records of Shanghai's activities in the film, including Suzhou Creek, Zhapu Road Bridge, Bund Park, North Bund Outer Hongqiao, Old Shanghai Racecourse, Dongting Mountain Wharf and other shots are the earliest visible at present.
Shanghai through the lens of Soviet filmmakers
After the October Revolution, the Soviet Union became the world's first socialist country. Under the influence of political factors, Soviet filmmakers also set their sights on China. From the 1920s to the early days of the People's Republic of China, there were three most iconic films about Shanghai under the lens of Soviet cinematographers.
The Great Flight and the Chinese Civil War (1925)
In 1925, the first flight from Moscow to Beijing was made, and the Soviet director B. A. Sneuigilov and photographer Bryum flew from Moscow via Mongolia to China for an expedition. Using moving footage footage shot in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, they edited and completed the documentary "The Great Flight and China's Civil War". The trip to China took place between July and August 1925, after the May Thirtieth Movement, when an anti-imperialist upsurge was set off in China, and director Sneyyginov wanted to make a film showing the revolutionary movement of the Chinese people, and truly present the situation of this anti-imperialist patriotic movement to Western audiences. There are a total of 6 books in the whole film, the last 3 books are about China, and there are 1 book each in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. The Soviet newspaper Pravda spoke highly of the film, arguing that it was "not a newsreel as it is commonly understood", but reached "the grandeur of the epic of social life". Later, the film was renamed The Light of the East and was screened in many countries in Western Europe as the first Soviet news documentary to be released abroad. The film records the pictures of General Feng Yuxiang inspecting the troops and giving speeches and military exercises; the foreign embassy district in Beijing - Dongjiaomin Lane and Beijing's ancient buildings, street appearance, and suburban countryside; Shanghai after the May Thirtieth Movement: warships of various countries moored in the Huangpu River, bustling concession life, and workers' strike movements; and historical images of the city street scenes and people's lives in Guangzhou, the revolutionary center, the leaders of the workers' movement, and the exercise and training of the Whampoa Military Academy.
The film's section about Shanghai is about 14 minutes long, and in addition to filming the bustling downtown areas such as the Bund and Nanjing Road, most of the space is devoted to showing the life of Shanghai's toiling masses and the workers' movement in full swing. The Yezon Shipyard on the North Bund, the workers' labor on the docks of the China Merchants Bureau, the strike committee of the Shanghai Federation of Trade Unions in Zhabei, the farmers working in the fields at the entrance of British factories and foreign consulates, the workers who participated in the strike with great enthusiasm... In this we also found a picture of director Sneigilov and Zhang Renya, the leader of the workers' movement and the early leader of the CCP. These are the richest and most precious video records of the May Thirtieth Movement that can be seen so far. In his later article "How I Made a Film in China in 1925", the director recalled the process of wrestling with the concession authorities and warlords when filming in Shanghai, as well as the various difficulties and obstacles encountered when the film material was transported back to the Soviet Union.
Shanghai Chronicle (1927)
If "The Great Flight" was also an experimental work of Soviet filmmakers on the theme of the Chinese revolution, then "Shanghai Chronicle" was the first documentary they planned and consciously created to completely reflect the reality of Shanghai society. The 52-minute, black-and-white silent film was created by The Soviet film director Yakov Brioch, who had assisted Eisenstein in filming Battleship Potemkin. He came to Shanghai in the spring of 1927 and filmed this news documentary, which showed on film the real situation in Shanghai at the end of the First Civil Revolutionary War.
Soon after Brioch and photographer Spantenov arrived in Shanghai, they experienced subversive historical events such as the success of the third armed workers' uprising led by the CCP, the increase of troops by powerful European and American powers, and Chiang Kai-shek's "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup. Shrouded in white terror, Brioch can be said to have withstood a more thrilling and arduous test than Sneigilov, who had to organize, communicate and shoot the entire film under the close tracking and obstruction of the Kuomintang authorities, the concession patrols and various bandits. Brioch documented these historical moments from his unique Bolshevik perspective, focusing on the suffering laborers at the bottom of Shanghai society. The film focuses on the imperialist invasion of China, the massacre of workers and peasants by domestic reactionaries, and the social pathological phenomena of the huge disparity between the rich and the poor in Shanghai and the extreme inequality between China and the West. It uses a strong contrast between the scenes and scenes, supplemented by political commentary subtitles, to show shanghai at that time, which was not only a paradise for foreign adventurers and a hell for the Chinese proletarians, but also a metropolis where the traditional customs of the East coexisted with the modern things of the West.
The content of the film involves the political, economic, military, cultural, social and other aspects of Shanghai at that time, with a clear structure, clear views and excellent production. Although the film has never been released in China, the old Shanghai footage has been widely cited by many news documentaries and has become a masterpiece that must be mentioned in the history of world documentary cinema.
These two documentaries, made in the 1920s, show that Soviet filmmakers were no longer satisfied with the curiosity of pandering to outsiders in the early days of cinema, but only recorded the Chinese scene that foreigners had never seen, but stood on the stand of the proletariat and paid more attention to the living conditions of the middle and lower classes of Chinese cities. Even if you photograph the bustling scenes of a bustling metropolis, you must explore the deep-seated reasons behind the prosperity by showing the support of the working class. Through the choice of subjects, we can see that these two films have deep sympathy for the oppressed and toiling masses, as well as tribute to the struggle of the Chinese people.
"People's Shanghai" (1949-1950) (Soviet name "New Shanghai")
From 1949 to 1950, the photography teams of the Soviet Union and China cooperated on color film to shoot a large number of moving images recording the appearance of the founding of New China and the early days of the country, and based on this batch of materials, three large-scale color documentaries were produced: "The Victory of the Chinese People", "Liberated China" and "Splendid Rivers and Mountains". Among them, one of the five-part series of color documentaries "Splendid Rivers and Mountains" jointly produced by the Central Document film studio of the Soviet Union and the Beijing Film Factory of China, "People's Shanghai", is about 18 minutes long, telling the thriving new atmosphere of Shanghai after the founding of New China and the new living conditions of the people. The director is Gerasimov, the choreographer of "Liberated China".
The film begins with a panoramic view of the Bund and Suzhou Creek from the roof of a Shanghai Tower in the morning light, accompanied by the bells of the Bund Bell Tower, heralding the beginning of a new day. Shops on Nanjing Road sweep to welcome guests, children listen to teachers in front of pushkin statues, dock workers are hard to pick up goods, apprentices of the city god temple learn crafts with their masters, fashionably dressed street pedestrians, lively street markets, then mayor of Shanghai Chen Yi stepped out of the car and walked into the municipal government building, young students walked into Fudan University with books, skilled textile workers in Guomian No. 1 Factory and children in factory nurseries, The agricultural exhibition held on the People's Square and the participation of Mayor Chen Yi and the working people in the Chongyang Festival Garden Party held in Zhongshan Park... This set of brightly colored historical images tells the transformation of Shanghai in the year of liberation, and the people of Shanghai who have come out of the war have finally ushered in a new life. After years of good preservation by film workers and the efforts of the Shanghai Audio-Visual Archive, the audience can now look back at the urban style of Shanghai in the early days of liberation without obstacles.
A classic documentary before and after the reform and opening up
"The Fool Moves the Mountain" series (1976)
During the Cultural Revolution, foreign filmmakers were invited by the Chinese government to make documentaries in China, and two films had a wide international impact, one was Antonioni's "China" and the other was the famous Dutch documentary film director Julis Evans and his wife, French director Marceline Rolidan Evans, who co-produced "The Fool Moves the Mountain". Antonioni only had a 22-day trip in China, and Evans's 12-episode masterpiece took five years to complete, and the film lasted 12 hours to record all aspects of Chinese society at that time.
From Dazhai in Shanxi, Daqing Oilfield in Northeast China, a military camp in Nanjing to the Peking Opera Troupe in Beijing, Evans traveled to most of China. From the end of 1972 to 1973, evans filmed for more than half a year at the Shanghai Electric Machinery Factory and the Third Medical Store, and finally edited into three documentaries: "Shanghai Electric Machinery Factory", "Shanghai Third Medical Store" and "Impressions of Shanghai City". The first two films show the industrial and economic development of Shanghai in the city with people and things in specific units as the main subjects, and the latter is the director's overall impression of Shanghai by shooting various details such as the life of the people in the city, food, clothing, housing, and commercial services. Through a large number of real-time interviews and dialogues and meticulous observations, the film records the lives of many ordinary people, leaving valuable video materials for Shanghai in the 1970s. People who have seen these films must be impressed by the following scenes: Shanghai citizens lining up to buy breakfast, shop assistants frying fritters, freshly baked green dough and sweet porridge, bowls of sake stuffed dumplings to be cooked... While filming, the director talked to the staff of the breakfast shop and the diners, and the picture was filled with a thick smoke and fire. In the bustling small vegetable market, the camera is not only aimed at the vegetable vendors and various fish, meat and vegetables, but also at the signs with the price of the dishes, and the voice-over uses some data to analyze the economic situation and people's living standards in Shanghai at that time. The female employees of the medical store returned to their mother's house with their husbands and children on the weekend, the son-in-law consciously did the laundry and did housework, and the wife and the husband were reading the newspaper and listening to music on the side.
Shanghai New Wind (1978)
In October 1978, Deng Xiaoping, then vice premier of the State Council, paid an official friendly visit to Japan and the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Friendship was formally signed, ushering in the era of reform and opening up. Documentary filmmaker Junichi Ushiyama, like many Japanese, is curious about China. He came to Shanghai and filmed a sensational Japanese documentary "Shanghai New Wind". Junichi Niushan, who specializes in video anthropology recording, did not choose well-known figures or Landmarks in Shanghai, but went into the homes of ordinary people and used the lens to capture the lives of residents in Zhangjiazhai in Shanghai's Jing'an District. The 72-minute documentary became the first video of Japanese people learning about modern life in China.
The film begins with the citizens of Zhangjiazhai getting up early to buy vegetables and eat early, detailing the price of vegetables and food in Shanghai, and many scenes are similar to the content of Evans's lens, but its commentary is more lifelike and humorous. From retired elderly people, young and middle-aged workers, to students and young children, the director has conducted interviews and filming. Residents turn on the water at the tiger stove, aunts organize cleaning in the streets, neighborhood committee meetings, barefoot doctors see doctors, young people fall in love and get married, residents sit around in the open air and watch TV together... These life-like scenes not only became a classic fragment of the film, but also contained the intimate relationship and warmth between the neighbors of Shanghai residents at that time, and became an unforgettable memory for the residents of Zhangjiazhai.
I don't know if it is a coincidence or influenced by Junichi Niushan, just the year after the release of "Shanghai New Wind", the Australian Film Bureau came to China to shoot Chinese a 5-episode documentary "The Human Face of China", focusing on ordinary people across China at the beginning of reform and opening up. One of the episodes, "Always Keep Up with the Trend of the World", also chooses a similar perspective to "Shanghai New Wind", focusing on the life of three generations of grandchildren in Pengpu New Village, Shanghai. This 27-minute short film reflects the living conditions of Shanghainese at that time from scenes such as grandma buying vegetables, grandpa cooking, granddaughter training at sports school, mom and dad going to work, and family picnic, and also left valuable image data for Pengpu New Village.
In the early 1980s, as China entered a new stage of reform and opening up, more and more foreign directors came to China to shoot documentaries, many of whom paid attention to cultural exchanges between China and foreign countries. In 1981, the American documentary "From Mao Zedong to Mozart" told the whole process of violin master Isaac Stern's performance and visit to China. In 1984, the Australian documentary "Children of Two Countries" showed the social landscape of China and the growth of children through the perspective of 8 Australian children who visited China. In the same year, the British documentary "Blues of the Seventeen factories of Shangmian: Music in China" recorded the scene of various kinds of music in the life of the Chinese people in the early days of reform and opening up. These films have a large focus on Shanghai, which is a good window to understand the cultural life of Shanghainese in the eyes of foreign filmmakers.
Editor-in-Charge: Shanshan Peng
Proofreader: Yan Zhang