Tientsin Street Scenes 2 - Ownsworth Personal Film - 1929

Tianjin
1929
Silent
4m

Revealing amateur snapshots of Chinese and European communities in Tianjin, northern China's largest coastal city.

This revealing amateur film throws light on the coexistence of Chinese and European communities in Tianjin (then Tientsin), the largest coastal metropolis in northern China. After an opening offering snapshots of a procession through the city streets, the scene soon changes to a leafy private garden, where western girls take tea - a perfect slice of British middle-class life recreated in China.

Like its neighbour Beijing, Tianjin was home to many established European communities in the 1920s and 30s. Its proximity to the Grand Canal had allowed the city to develop as a major sea-port and trading capital. In 1858 the Treaty of Tianjin also opened it up to foreign trade - and foreign influences. This was one of a collection of films filmed by amateur filmmaker J.G. Thompson - who worked on the Peking railway - in the late 1920s and early 30s, and donated to the BFI in 1999 by Mrs R Ownsworth. Thompson shot a number of films in China, Japan and the Phillipines, as well as in Egypt.

Beijing - Northern Capital

Beijing's ancient streets and palaces come alive in a collection of fascinating and often beautiful travelogues and home movies shot between 1908 and 1939.

Beijing has been at the heart of China's political and cultural life for almost a thousand years. Though much of its ancient fabric is preserved, swathes of the city were lost in decades of urban regeneration projects. So these films from the first half of the 20th century open a window on to the city's lost past. Chinese filmmakers weren't active when the earliest films of Beijing (then known as Peking) were made, so these British and European films are among the only moving images of that time.

Thanks to these pioneering cameramen, we can witness everyday life in the last years of the Qing dynasty, make our way from the European quarter of the city to the magnificent Forbidden Palace and the bustling Grand Canal, or roam the streets around the Qianmen gate. These often amateur cinematographers offer us a fresh look at a majestic and complex city, from the palaces and pagodas of Beihai Park, a trek around the Great Wall with intrepid honeymooners, to a cruise down the Grand Canal to Shanghai. This may be a Beijing seen through western eyes, but they are the eyes of a rapt enthusiast, not a jaded tour guide.