Life in Shanghai

From the collection of

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton collects, preserves, catalogues and provides public access to its collection of films and magic lantern slides. The collection charts the rise of screen culture in the region and the nation and captures many aspects of life, work and creativity in the South East from the late 19th century to the present day. It is available for research, screenings, creative re-use and commercial access.

Life in Shanghai

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
Shanghai
1933-01-01
Silent
16m

A Dragon procession, a Japanese beer festival, two duck shoots and a day at the races all feature in this remarkable film from 1930s Shanghai.

Starting with scenes in Japan, this film relocates to Shanghai where expats can be seen socialising at a beer festival with members of the Japanese military. Next we see a duck shoot followed by dog racing and a dragon procession. Two cyclists dressed as aircraft bearing Chinese nationalist flags pass by before we see another duck shoot in progress somewhere in the waters surrounding Shanghai. The film ends at Shanghai's racecourse with the smokey city in the distance.

In 1934 it was normal for European and Japanese nationals to socialise in Shanghai, despite the ongoing conflict between China and Japan. At that time the Japanese were the largest foreign contingent living in the city - particularly in the International Settlement, which had been a wholly foreign controlled district since the 19th century. It even had its own independent force called the Shanghai Municipal Police and Richard Martin, who filmed these scenes, was a member. The International Settlement was considered neutral territory but the day after Pearl Harbour was attacked, Japanese forces occupied the entire city and sent most of Shanghai's American and European residents to internment camps.

Shanghai - Pearl of the Orient

Western filmmakers captured the first moving images of one of the world's great cities. These remarkable films preserve a metropolis whose streets and waterways teem with life.

When cinema first came to China's shores, Shanghai was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The new technology was exhibited at the city's Xu Gardens in August 1896 (just months after the Lumière Brothers' first demonstration in Paris), and the earliest ever filmed images of the city were captured - by Western filmmakers - soon after.

Some of the oldest surviving footage of Shanghai was shot by a British war correspondent, dispatched to China to cover the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. It captures the teeming multi-national traffic on the central Nanjing Lu thoroughfare, from gliding bicycles and rattling rickshaws, to a Sikh police detachment and German soldiers enjoying a cigarette. Shanghai's famous waterfront, the Bund, captivated numerous filmmakers in the 20s and 30s, and several films here show a remarkable thronging harbour life, with sampans clustering beneath the Bund's baroque temples of commerce and leisure.

Also featuring in this collection of newsreels, travelogues and home movies are scenes of the Japanese occupation of the city in 1937, and the death and destruction that followed. These are sombre, even harrowing scenes, but a crucial chapter in Shanghai's history.