Parades and air-raids 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.

Parades and air-raids in Shanghai

Screen Archive South East at the University of Brighton
Shanghai
1937-01-01
Silent
16m

While the bombs fall on Shanghai its foreign expats continue to play, as this unique film shows. But it's only the lull before the storm - because the Japanese are on their way.

For the expat communities living in 1937 Shanghai life just carries on as normal with military parades, banger-racing, stunt-driving and various sports of the four and two-legged variety. But at the same time this unique film captures glimpses of the devastation caused by Japanese air-raids on the Chinese parts of the city. We see the film-maker in his Shanghai Municipal Police uniform visiting blitzed parts of the city as well as spending time with his children.

The Japanese bombing of Shanghai, the effects of which are seen in this film, occurred between 23 August and 31 October 1937. By the end of 1937 the Japanese Army occupied most of the city except the International Settlement, where the film-maker lived. But it wasn't the first time that the city had suffered an attack from the air. On 29 January 1932 about 1000 citizens were killed when the Japanese bombed the suburb of Chapei. However, the numbers killed in the 1937 air-raids was significantly higher. After 8 December 1941 Japanese forces occupied the entire city, and in time sent most of Shanghai's foreign nationals, including the film-maker, who was in the Shanghai Municipal Police, 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.