Crossroads (Shizi Jietou) 1937 All ages
2.00pm Sunday 25 March / Cinema A

35MM, 106 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: SHEN XILING / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHOU SHIMU, WANG YURU / CAST: ZHAO DAN, BAI YANG, LU BAN, SHA MANG, YI MING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MINGXING (STAR) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Crossroads is a classic of 1930s Chinese cinema. Director Shen Xiling trained in fine arts and worked as a stage designer before he began writing screenplays and directed his first film, Protest of Women 1933, at Mingxing Film Company. This story of young people at the crossroads of their lives features Zhao Dan, one of the most celebrated actors in Chinese film history. Of the around 20 films that he starred in for Mingxing, Crossroads and Street Angel are the best known. He is also in Crows and Sparrows 1949. Mingxing expanded its inclusion of left-wing directors and subjects from the early to mid 1930s in an attempt to get out of financial difficulty.

Street Angel (Malu Tianshi) 1937 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 24 March / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 86 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: YUAN MUZHI / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): MONCKTON HOFFE / CINEMATOGRAPHY: WU YINXIAN / CAST: ZHAO DAN, ZHOU XUAN, WEI HELING, ZHAO HUISHEN, WANG JITING, QIAN QIANLI, YUAN SHAOMEI, LIN JINYU / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MINGXING (STAR) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Hong (Zhou Xuan) and her sister Yun live in a desperately poor part of Shanghai, having fled Manchuria after the Japanese invasion. Yun works as a prostitute to support them, while Hong sings in the streets with her tutor, who one day decides to sell her to a gangster. Friends from her neighbourhood help her to escape. Love-struck trumpeter Chen Xiaoping (Zhao Dan) takes her to live in another part of the city but her sister is found by gangsters and tragedy ensues. The film is diva Zhou Xuan’s most celebrated role. A classic of the Shanghai cinema, it is said to have been inspired by the 1928 Frank Borzage film of the same name as it features dramatic lighting and Soviet-style editing techniques. Director and scriptwriter Yuan Muzhi joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1940 and established the Northeast Film Studio in the same year, after the CCP took over Manchurian Motion Pictures. In 1949, after the creation of the People’s Republic of China, he was chosen to head the Film Bureau in the Ministry of Culture.

The Spring River Flows East (Yijiang Chunshui Xiangdongliu) 1947 All ages
Part 1: 1.00pm, Part 2: 2.30pm Sunday 15 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, B. & W., MONO, 2 PARTS: PART 1 ‘WARTIME SEPARATION’ (BA NIAN LI LUAN), 81 MINS; PART 2 ‘DARKNESS AND DAWN’ (TIANLIANG QIAN-HOU), 77 MINS, CHINA, MANDARIN / DIRECTORS/SCRIPT: CAI CHUSHENG, ZHENG JUNLI / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHU JINMING / EDITOR: WU TINGFAN / ART DIRECTION: ZHU FUXIANG, LIN AFU, ZHU AXIANG / MUSIC: ZHANG ZHENGFAN / CAST: BAI YANG, TAO JIN, SHU XIUWEN, ZHOU BOXUN, SHANGGUAN YUNZHU / PRODUCTION COMPANIES: LIANHUA FILM COMPANY (UNITED PHOTOPLAY SERVICE), KUNLUN FILM STUDIO / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

This epic melodrama has been described as the Chinese Gone with the Wind. Interestingly, Gone with the Wind sold 170 000 tickets when it came out in Shanghai in 1947, while Spring River Flows East sold over 700 000 tickets and its run extended from October 1947 to January 1948. It achieved the highest box office total of the 1940s. A melodrama of family separation in wartime, the film paints a historical and social canvas of political events in the period between the war against Japan (1937–45) and the Communist victory of 1949. Documentary images from the war against Japan are integrated into the narrative. It traces a mother and her child separated from the child’s father in occupied Shanghai. He escapes to a Kuomintang-dominated area and slides into decadence, taking a mistress. The mother, Su Fend (Bai Yang), destitute on the city streets with her child, is a potent symbol of the suffering amid political conflict. Her character underlines by contrast the moral decay of the nationalist sympathisers, and provides an allegory of the construction of the nation through hard work and endurance. A postwar studio, Kunlun attracted directors such as Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, who had made their name in 1930s left-wing productions.

Myriad of Lights (Wanjia Denghuo 1948 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 14 April / Cinema A 

35MM, 113 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: SHEN FU / SCRIPT: YANG HANGSHENG, SHEN FU / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHU JINMING / CAST: LAN MA, WU YIN, SHANGGUAN YUNZHU, SHEN YANG, QI HENG / PRODUCTION COMPANY: KULUN FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Hu Zhiqing (Lan Ma) works in an office and barely earns enough to support his wife You Lan (Shangguan Yunzhu) and their child. When his mother, brother and sister-in-law arrive from the country and Hu loses his job, the situation becomes desperate. The film shows the economic crisis at the end of the 1940s and conflicts between an urban couple and traditional rural family members. Kunlun productions Myriad of Lights and Crows and Sparrows 1949 continue in the vein of social realism developed in the 1930s — both films are considered masterpieces of the postwar period.

Orphan on the Streets aka Winter of Three Hairs (San Mao Liulangji) 1949 All ages
2.00pm Wednesday 18 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 71 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN / DIRECTORS: ZHAO MING, YAN GONG / SCRIPT: YANG HANSHENG / ORIGINAL STORY (COMIC): ZHANG LEPING / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHU JINMING, HAN ZHONGLIANG / MUSIC: WANG YUNJIE / CAST: WANG LONGJI, LIN ZHEN, HUANG CHEN, GUAN HONGDA, MO CHOU / PRODUCTION COMPANY: KUNLUN FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Like Crows and Sparrows 1949, Orphan on the Streets was filmed in the winter of 1948 in Shanghai, but only completed after the arrival of the Communists in 1949. Adapted from Zhang Luoping’s cartoons about a six-year-old street urchin, the film follows the orphan San Mao (‘Three Hairs’) through the winter of 1948 as he fends for himself doing odd jobs, avoiding crooks and joining a loyal gang of children. Adopted by thieves, he reluctantly helps them steal and narrowly avoids being caught. Starving, San Mao decides to sell himself to a rich family who look after him and teach him good manners. He quickly feels trapped by their bourgeois lifestyle and escapes onto the street again. The Kuomintang censors found the script subversive and it was repeatedly modified before being passed.

Little Cheung aka The Kid (Xilu Xiang) 1950 All ages
1.00pm Sunday 6 May / Cinema A

35MM, 99 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, CANTONESE (CHINESE & ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: FUNG FUNG / PRODUCER: LEUNG BIU / SCRIPT: TSO KEA / ORIGINAL STORY (COMIC): YUEN PO-WAN / CINEMATOGRAPHY: YUEN TSANG-SAM / EDITOR: MANY LUNG / SOUND: TSUI SIU-LUN / CAST: BRUCE LEE, YEE CHAU-SHUI, LEE HOI-CHUEN, FUNG FUNG, CHAN WAI-YU / PRODUCTION COMPANY: DATONG FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: ASIA TELEVISION LTD / SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM

A ten-year-old Bruce Lee plays Little Cheung, an orphan who falls in with petty criminals. Lee’s father, Lee Hoi-chuen, appears as Hung Pak-ho, the owner of a drapery factory who attempts to help Little Cheung by arranging schooling and then work in his factory. Director Fung Fung, originally a Cantonese opera performer, appears as Flash Knife Lee, a thief who takes Little Cheung under his wing. The characters are from a popular comic strip by Yuen Po-wan, who plays the corrupt son of the factory owner. The film displays a postwar social conscience and is an impressive example of Cantonese social realism. Hong Kong's progressive cinema of the 1950s was a direct descendant of the left-wing cinema which emerged in Shanghai two decades earlier. Mandarin cinema was first produced in Hong Kong in 1941 by Shanghai directors in a Kuomintang film office established in the territory before it fell under Japanese control during the war. After the war new left-wing production companies made Mandarin language films in Hong Kong and Cantonese cinema also took up social realist subjects. During Bruce Lee’s little-known period as a child actor, he appeared in more than 20 Cantonese films.

The Orphan (Renhai Guhong) 1960 All ages
3.00pm Sunday 6 May / Cinema A

35MM, 100 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, HONG KONG, CANTONESE (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: LI CHENFENG / SCRIPT: WU CHUFAN / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): OUYANG TIAN / CINEMATOGRAPHY: SUN LUN / CAST: WU CHUFAN, BRUCE LEE, BAI YAN, FENG FENG, LI YUEQING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: HUA LIAN FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: NG CHI-WANG

Bruce Lee plays Ah San, a young delinquent involved with a crime syndicate who is bailed out of jail by the director of a boys’ home, He Siqi (Wu Chufan). He Siqi’s wife died in the war and his son also disappeared at the time, so he now dedicates his life to helping boys who turn to crime on the streets on Hong Kong. The film locates the cause of social problems in the trauma and loss caused by war and displacement; scriptwriter and actor Wu Chufan had the idea for the story after visiting an orphanage. It draws on audiences’ memories of the war and includes documentary footage of refugees arriving in Hong Kong. Good scripting and performances combine with location shooting and high production values to make this a very fine Cantonese feature in a social realist vein. It was also the first colour film made in Cantonese. Although released in 1960, it was filmed earlier, before Bruce Lee departed Hong Kong for the United States in 1958.