Module 1: Laborer’s Love (1922)
A short slapstick comedy, in which ingenuity and love triumph.
Module 2: Sports Queen (1934)
In this star vehicle for Li Lili, a talented sprinter at a women’s sports academy in Shanghai learns lessons about the true athletic spirit.
Module 3: Goddess (1934)
Ruan Lingyu stars as a single mother in Shanghai struggling to give her young son an education, in the face of exploitation and social prejudice.
Module 4: The Great Road (1934)
In this genre-bending romp, laid-off roadworkers head to the interior to build a great road for China’s military to fight off “the enemy.”
Module 5: New Women (1935)
A sensational social drama about “the woman question” in modern Chinese society. What are women’s lives really like in China today? And what should they be?
Module 6: Song at Midnight (1937)
Phantom of the Opera meets revolutionary history in China’s first horror-musical.
Module 7: Street Angels (1937)
Zhou Xuan sings two hit songs in this social drama by experimental filmmaker Yuan Muzhi.
Module 8: Long Live the Missus! (1947)
A battle of the sexes involving an overeager-to-please wife, an unreliable husband, and a seductive con woman.
Module 9: Spring River Flows East (1947)
A two-part, three-hankie family melodrama set during the Anti-Japanese War and its aftermath.
Module 10: Spring in a Small Town (1948)
Director Fei Mu’s lyrical representation of people coping with loss and longing in the aftermath of war.
Module 11: Crows and Sparrows (1949)
An epochal film, produced and set at the end of civil war, centering on a fight over housing. Who will stay and who will go?
Module 12: Course Wrap-Up
These eleven films are just the beginning. A few ideas for further explorations of early Chinese cinema.
