Film researcher to the rescue
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E-mail Shanghai Daily, January 4, 2016
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A scene from "Flower Street." |
Four of the eight films screened at the recent Shanghai Film Museum and Shanghai Film Archive also came from Wu's collection, including "The Barber Takes a Wife."
Actress Tong also donated all the films she had managed to preserve, including three recently shown in Shanghai. In 1933, she and her husband founded the Shanghai Xinhua Film Co, and together they produced many film classics.
Quiquemelle and her team later found a businessman surnamed Miao, who was promoting Chinese films to southeastern TV stations from a collection of copies of old films he had.
"We knew we had found a treasure when we saw the list he gave us," Quiquemelle said. "It's really a huge collection."
Quiquemelle and Kuo spent long days in Miao's studio going through his collection. They had to buy the films with their own money because support for their research center had stopped.
It was fortunate that Kuo was employed by United Nations as a translator, which gave the couple a good income.
Transporting all the film they collected to Paris presented another formidable cost. They were lucky to find some sympathetic people in the Air France office in Hong Kong who agreed to transport most of the films for free.
In Paris in 1979, Quiquemelle and Kuo established the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur le Cinema Chinois and used it as a base for the search for more vintage films.
The center also received some movies donated by the famous Chinese actress Li Lihua in 1980s, including several film in which she played leading roles.
"Our center has the largest collection of Li's films, including some of the only existing copies, such as ‘The Barber Takes a Wife,'" she said.
In ensuing years, Quiquemelle and her group aired films for audiences at the Paris Diderot University. Some of the movies were also screened at international film festivals.
"I think the French enjoy Chinese movies more than the Chinese love French movies," Quiquemelle said.
Most of the classic film collection amassed by Quiquemelle and her team are now carefully preserved in the French Film Archive. Some of the movies donated by Tong were given to the Taiwan film archive in 1989 when it was established at Tong's behest.
"We do not allow people to watch the original copies of these films anymore because they are so fragile," Quiquemelle said.
No matter how well stored such old films are, they are still susceptible to what is called "vinegar syndrome." That occurs when chemicals on film strips release acetic acid and cause the films to degrade.
"The archive has had to move the affected films out," she said. "Some were destroyed before we noticed the degradation. We have transferred only about half of the collection into digital format, which will preserve the films longer. It would require a huge sum of money for us to digitalize all of them, and right now we are in our 70s and don't have the energy for the fundraising required."
Why do some movies retain their timeless allure?
"Although they were produced in an era lacking in advanced technologies, classic films still tell good stories in a very engaging way," she said. "There is a lot we can still learn from them today."
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