Film researcher to the rescue
0 Comment(s)
Print
E-mail Shanghai Daily, January 4, 2016
 |
|
A scene from "The Barber Takes a Wife," the first Chinese film dubbed in English and screened in Europe and the US after World War II. |
It was during this period that she met Kuo Kwan Leung, who had just returned to Hong Kong after finishing his studies in France. They were later married.
The couple worked with the New Asia College, which is part of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where they met people associated with the local film industry.
"Many entrepreneurs, scholars and cinema people went to Hong Kong from Shanghai," she said. "Before 1949, Shanghai was a filmmaking center in China. At that time, there were personalities such as film producer Wu Xingzai and stars such as Tong Yuejuan and Li Lihua."
She added, "They not only set up new film studios or companies in Hong Kong, but they also brought along some films produced before 1949 in Shanghai."
Quiquemelle and her team also found that Hong Kong film companies were doing a poor job of preserving old films since budgets were tight and audiences in Hong Kong and some Southeast Asian countries were small.
"We found many copies of old movies piled up in shabby warehouses, exposed to the hot, humid weather of Hong Kong," she said.
"Some of the films had deteriorated beyond repair. It seemed the local government didn't see the necessity of protecting Chinese cultural heritage. A film archive wasn't established in Hong Kong until 1993. Compare that with France, where an archive was set up in 1936 by Henri Langlois, a world pioneer in film preservation."
So Quiquemelle and her team began collecting old Chinese films. Film mogul Wu, who had run several film companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong, became an active supporter and donated the first batch of movies.
The first film copy they collected was "Zhan Jing Tang," or "Murder in the Oratory." The movie tells the tale of a military general who killed his wife. She was the daughter of Wang Mang, an Eastern Han Dynasty (AD 25-200) politician who had usurped the throne and helped Liu Xiu to establish the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 24).
The film was produced in 1937 by Wu's Lianhua Film Co.
Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)