Cities & Cinema: Shanghai

A port city that grew up from an agricultural village, Shanghai has witnessed periods of sweeping societal change. With its open port status, which meant that it didn’t require visas or passports for entry, the city allowed many Jewish refugees safe harbor during World War II. Shanghai was the site of brutal fighting during the Second Sino-Japanese War and occupation. The city also took center stage during the rise of communism and the eventual Chinese Revolution of 1949. In recent decades, with the rapid shift toward modernity, Shanghai’s old city and neighborhoods have all but disappeared, replaced by skyscrapers.

This thematic series reflects and muses on periods of Shanghai’s history, as depicted in archival newsreels, home movies, documentaries, and fiction films made by Chinese and foreign filmmakers. Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew offers testimonials about Shanghai, and Ulrike Ottinger’s Exile Shanghai tells of the experience of the Jewish community there. Hearst Metrotone Newsreels are paired with fiction films set in the 1930s and 1940s, such as G. W. Pabst’s The Shanghai Drama, Tsui Hark’s Shanghai Blues, Zheng Junli’s Crows and Sparrows, and Lou Ye’s Suzhou River, a late 1990s noir thriller that harkens back to the 1930s. In the case of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai, the idea of the city is evoked in a masterful work of interiority set in 1890s Shanghai brothels. Chinese film expert Paul Fonoroff will introduce three of the films in the series that offer perspectives on old Shanghai.

—Susan Oxtoby, Director of Film and Senior Film Curator

Check specific showtimes and tickets HERE.