New and Old Shanghai (Xinjiu Shanghai) 1936 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 31 March / Cinema A

35MM, 103 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: CHENG BUGAO / SCRIPT: HONG SHEN / CINEMATOGRAPHY: DONG KEYI / CAST: SHU XIUWEN, WANG XIANZHAI, HUANG NAISHUANG, ZHU QIUHEN, GU MEIJUN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MINGXING (STAR) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

New and Old Shanghai shows the life of Shanghai’s working people through the families and individuals who live in a small tenement building: a teacher, a dancer, a driver, an apprentice carpenter, a man who hides his unemployment after losing his job, and others. Tightly scripted by Hong Shen, the film features innovative cinematography and editing. Cheng Bugao wrote newspaper film criticism before he started directing in 1924. After joining Mingxing Film Company in 1928 he became a prolific and important director who, while not strongly associated with left-wing filmmaking, often took on social issues and explored humanist themes. After the war he moved to Hong Kong.

Night Inn (Ye Dian) 1947 All ages
1.00pm Sunday 1 April / Cinema A

35MM, 107 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: HUANG ZUOLIN / SCRIPT: KE LING / ORIGINAL STORY (PLAY): MAXIM GORKY / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHUANG YUANJUN, XU QI / CAST: WEIWEI, ZHOU XUAN, ZHANG FA, SHI HUI, TONG ZANGLING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: WENHUA FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

The occupants of an inn owned by the ruthless and unpleasant Mr and Mrs Wen include a petty thief, a street vendor, a prostitute, a garbage collector and a street performer. Mr Wen demands rent payment from a sick tenant, while Mrs Wen plots to manipulate the thief into murdering her husband. Night Inn is an adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths: Scenes from Russian Life, first produced in Moscow in 1902 by Konstantin Stanislavski. Gorky’s play shows the relationships among the working-class tenants of a boarding house and explores whether it is better to live happily with illusions or to grasp the full, often miserable truth. Jean Renoir adapted the play in Les Bas Fonds 1936 and Akira Kurosawa transposed it to Edo-period Japan in Donzoko (The Lower Depths) 1957.

Crows and Sparrows (Wuya yu Maque) 1949 All ages
3.00pm Sunday 1 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 107 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: ZHENG JUNLI / PRODUCER: XIA YUNHU, REN ZONGDE / SCRIPT: CHEN BAICHEN, SHEN FU, WANG LINGU, XU TAO, ZHAO DAN, ZHENG JUNLI / CINEMATOGRAPHY: MIAO ZHENHUA, HU ZHENHUA / EDITOR: WU TINGFAN / ART DIRECTION: NIU BAORONG, XU XING / MUSIC: WANG YUNJIE / CAST: ZHAO DAN, WEI HELING, SUN DAOLIN, HUANG ZONGYING, LI TIANJI / PRODUCTION COMPANY: KUNLUN FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Set in Shanghai just before the Red Army expelled Chang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Kuomintang from the city in 1949, Crows and Sparrows stages the division of the city inside a lodging house. Hou Yibo has profited from his position in the Kuomintang to accumulate wealth, including the building in which he lives on the top floor with his mistress while renting out the lower rooms to a teacher and his family, a couple who sells small goods and an old man who works for a newspaper. Hou puts them all on notice of expulsion so he wants to liquidate his assets and flee to Taiwan. The vendors concoct a plan to purchase the house with profits from converting cash to gold while other tenants demand a vacancy fee. The lodgers finally pull together when the daughter of the school teacher nearly dies for lack of an expensive treatment of penicillin. Meanwhile the Communists approach. The film began production in 1948, before the events it depicts had taken place; director Zheng Junli confounded the Kuomintang censors by submitting a false script and keeping the actual shooting script hidden at the studio. A realist masterpiece with solid characterisation and a strong vein of humour, Crows and Sparrows is recognised internationally as a key film in the history of Chinese cinema. Director Zheng Junli was originally an actor and appears in two films in this program, Big Road 1936 and New Women 1935. He began directing in the 1940s and worked with Cai Chusheng on the epic Spring River Flows East 1947. Imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, he died in 1969.

35MM, 125 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, CANTONESE / DIRECTOR: LI TIT / PRODUCER: CHAN MAN / SCRIPT: YU KON-CHI (LO DUN AND CHAN WAN) CINEMATOGRAPHY: SUEN LUN / EDITORS: LEUNG SHING, POON CHIU / MUSIC: YE CHUNZHI / CAST: CHEUNG YING, LO DUN, MUI YEE, NG CHO-FAN, TSI LO-LIN, LEE YUET-CHING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: ZHONGLIAN (UNION) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: ASIA TELEVISION LTD

In a crowded Hong Kong tenement building lives a cast of lively characters: dancer Pak Ying (Tsi Lo-lin), taxidriver Leung Wai (Ng Cho-fan), new resident and teacher Mr Luo (Cheung Ying), and others who earn livings as best they can. Mr Luo becomes the rent collector and is treated with disdain by all of the community. The tenants must unite to save their home when it is damaged in a storm and threatened with demolition.