Chinese Events at the Hippodrome Silent Film Festival, 22-26 March 2017
The Hippodrome Silent Film Festival, will take place in an authentic 1910s movie theatre in Bo'ness, Scotland from 22 to 26 March. The festival features screenings of rarely-seen silent era films with world-class live music accompaniments. There are three events relating to Chinese cinema, sponsored by the Confucius Institute for Scotland and co-organised with Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh.
HippFest Talk: Women in Chinese Silent Cinema (Prof. Paul Pickowicz)
Thursday 23 March, 14:00, 1h 15m incl. Q&A
Introduced by Prof. Natascha Gentz
Performing live: Forrester Pyke (piano)
This fascinating illustrated presentation by Prof. Paul Pickowicz explores the golden age of Chinese silent cinema. The directors and screenwriters working in the film industry were men but it was women – the legendary actresses of the early Chinese film world – who dominated the silver screens of Shanghai and captivated the imaginations of the rapidly growing urban film audience. Filmmakers were eager to confront the complicated and frightening national crisis facing China in the pre-war years but why did they place Chinese women at the centre of their gut-wrenching narratives about the national calamity, and why were their accounts of women’s struggles so preoccupied with sex and violence?
Prof. Paul Pickowicz (University of California, San Diego) is a true interdisciplinary scholar and one of the country’s leading historians of modern China with fifteen books to his credit.
HippFest Talk: Around China with a Movie Camera (Ruth Chan)
Thursday 23 March, 16:00 1h 35m
Take a trip back in time with this programme of rare and beautiful travelogues, newsreels and home movies. See Shanghai’s bustling, cosmopolitan Nanjing Road in 1900, and a day at the Shanghai races in 1937. Cruise Hangzhou's picturesque canals and visit China's remote villages in Hunan and Yunnan provinces. Made by British and French filmmakers - from professionals to intrepid tourists, colonial-era expatriates and missionaries – this programme explores fifty years of Chinese history and includes possibly the oldest surviving film to be shot in China, unseen for over 115 years.
We are delighted to welcome Ruth Chan, composer of the music commissioned for this programme by the BFI, to introduce the screening and give us a personal insight into her composition, the instruments used and the unique challenge of creating music for this extraordinary footage.
Dir: various | UK & China | silent with recorded score | 1h 8m plus intro | b&w & Pathécolor stencil
THE GODDESS (Shennü 神女)
Saturday 25th March 16:30
Introduced by Dr Julian Ward
Performing live: John Sweeney (piano)
A masterpiece of social realism featuring Chinese superstar Ruan Lingyu as a struggling mother who takes to prostitution on the streets of Shanghai in order to shelter her son from the corrupt city and give him a better chance in life. This devastatingly beautiful and recently restored film was made by first time director/writer/designer Wu Yonggang aged just 27-years-old, and draws its great power from the striking and subtle performance by Ruan. Ruan’s heart-rending and sympathetic portrayal of a self-sacrificing woman at the mercy of society’s hypocrisy was a sensation that was tragically echoed in her real-life. On the eve of her trial for adultery and after months of tabloid harassment Ruan killed herself, aged 24, just one year after the release of ‘The Goddess’.
Dir. Wu Yonggang | China| 1934 | 1h 13m |
With: Ruan Lingyu, Tian Jian, Zhang Zhizhi
Screening material courtesy of China Film Archive
For more details please visit:
http://www.falkirkcommunitytrust.org/venues/hippodrome/silent-cinema/
See the festival brochure here.
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