Really old Chinese films

[chengdude]

I was just looking over a list of some experts' choices for the most influential Chinese films of the 20th Century and thought I'd ask if anyone has found films from 1930's Shanghai studios (read, the pre-war gilded age of decadence) available? I'm sure film archives in Hong Kong have preserved some these exceedingly rare titles while others might have disappeared entirely (or in part). The Guggenheim ran a retrospective some time back that almost warranted a trip to NYC, but alas, it didn't happen.

[niubi]

some stuff is available on vcd and less on dvd - that is, available for purchase online; no doubt one would have better luck finding stuff on the ground in china/hk/taiwan. most editions lack subtitles, but frequently have chinese subtitles: in the early days of film in china standard mandarin was far from universally understood or spoken. by the way were you refering to the 100 greatest chinese films of the 20th century list as published by asia weekly?

following is a list of some of the films from the first half of the 20th century in my collection:

spring river flows east 一江春水向東流 dir. cai chusheng and zheng junli DVD

twin sisters 姊妹花 dir. zheng zhengqiu VCD

spring silkworms 春蠶 dir. cheng bugao VCD

long live the mistress! 太太萬歲 dir. sang hu VCD

this life of mine 我這一輩子 dir. shi hui VCD

the goddess 神女 dir. wu yonggang VCD

spring time in a small town 小城之春 dir. fei mu VCD

street angels 馬路天使 dir. yuan muzhi DVD

crossroads 十字街頭 dir. shen xiling VCD

lights of 10,000 homes 萬家燈火 dir. shen fu VCD

crows and sparrows 烏鴉與麻雀 dir. zheng junli VCD

[edited to increase the size of the characters. Roddy[/edit]

[roddy]

The original Springtime in a Small Town was available as part of a boxed set with the recent remake. The others I don't know about, but I'll keep an eye out. It'd be handy to have the Chinese names though, as they're unlikely to have the English on the packaging.

Roddy

[niubi]

see above, i've updated my post with chinese titles.

[roddy]

Excellent. Can't say I've seen any of them around, but I'll start paying more attention. Might even print it out and take it into the shops.

Roddy

[niubi]

...reminds me that i need to work on a 'wish list' of chinese films and music i'd like to add to my collection.

by the way, i purchased all those films mentioned above from yesasia.com.

[roddy]

Wow. What an ideal opportunity to plug the affiliate link to Yesasia.com up in the top right corner of your screen . . .

Roddy

[cometrue]

渔光曲

大路

新女性

孤岛时期

东亚之光

保家乡

世界儿女

木兰从军

i dont know the english names

[chengdude]

by the way were you refering to the 100 greatest chinese films of the 20th century list as published by asia weekly?

Yes, I was.

some stuff is available on vcd and less on dvd - that is, available for purchase online;

Unfortunately, those qualifiers probably need to be whittled down further as much of kulong's list doesn't seem to be available anymore, if ever, from the usual suspects.

by the way, i purchased all those films mentioned above from yesasia.com.

See "usual suspects" above. On the plus side, they're having a sale right now, so it's a good time to stock up on some titles before they go out of print as well.