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JOSEPH W. HO: So the China on Film Collection at the British Film Institute is a collection of rare films produced in China and Hong Kong before the 1950s. There's over 100 of them, and they

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cover life and environments and everyday scenes in China and Hong Kong. Within 10 years of film's invention in France in 1895, the first Chinese film is made in 1905.

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This development of film very quickly around the world is mapped onto China's national development. In the years following the First World War, Chinese and foreign film studios will

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be producing films in local and national environments in China for both commercial, political, and entertainment value. What's interesting about this development

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is that it produces some of China's most historic and early ways of seeing a nation and a people through film, in all sorts of dynamic perspectives. These are, however, commercial films,

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and they're professional films. What's missing from the picture is the amateur perspective, the vernacular perspective. And this is why this collection is

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so valuable is that it contains all of these films from everyday people, from amateur filmmakers who may or may not be involved in professional productions.

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As a result, it adds to a history of film in China that has not been seen before and really diversifies the ways that we can see filmmaking and film history

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as both a professional and a personal product in Chinese history. In the 1920s, there was a rise in amateur filmmaking due to a global culture of filmmaking based around new

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and smaller film technologies, 16-millimetre film, 9.5-millimetre film, and then 8-millimetre film all allowed for a smaller cameras, more portable projectors, and ways of producing film that did not have to be based

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in large, bulky technology. At the same time, there was a rise in commercial amateur film networks that exchanged material that allowed for film to be shipped around the world for processing

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and for circulation. Because of this, there was a rise in amateur filmmaking in China as well as in East Asia. Foreigners who were travelling to China carried movie cameras

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with them. Foreigners working in China, as well as Chinese elites who had access to movie making technology, used these smaller types of film formats

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to document their experiences in all sorts of ways. Some of these people were involved in educational projects, in building schools and transmitting knowledge about China

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to both regional and international audiences. Others were involved in religious projects. Christian missionaries and Chinese Christians were all involved in creating and circulating film.

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Others involved in government reform or intellectual projects connected to political dynamics were also creating film as a way to reach mass audiences. And all of these experiences were built

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on the diversification and development of small film technology and amateur film, providing more perspectives and more access in ways unparalleled in the 1920s and beyond.

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Typical cameras used by amateurs in China in the 1920s through the 1940s would have looked something like this. This is a cinema Kodak Model B spring-wound movie camera using 16-millimetre film.

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This particular camera was actually used in China in the 1930s by a pair of American Presbyterian medical missionaries. So this camera has seen a lot of history

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in its time and existence in China, as well as the United States. The typical way that one might have used this camera in China was to first purchase or be sent raw film footage

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to load the camera with. And you could get this footage from any number of commercial suppliers in China in the 1920s and '30s. Major cities had supply networks connected to Europe

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and the United States. Especially with Kodak being a worldwide phenomenon, worldwide corporation, you would have the film sent to you, and you would load this camera with rolls of a hundred feet

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in terms of raw film. Once you were done loading the film in the camera, you could essentially use this as a portable filmmaking device. These types of cameras were designed

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to replicate the experiences of amateur film filmmakers who were used to still photography. So the settings on this camera, as well as some of the viewfinders on this camera,

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were meant to replicate the experience of taking a still photograph to make it more convenient and comfortable for those who are not used to filmmaking at this time. I should emphasise that filmmaking was a profoundly

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experimental experience. The family that received this movie camera in 1931, who were living in China, as medical missionaries, had no experience whatsoever in making films before this time.

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They had a still camera. They knew how to use that. But this camera was profoundly new. And many of their films were experimental as a result.

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The way you use it is to simply set your exposure. You would estimate your focusing distance, how far away you were from a subject. You would crank the camera to power the motor.

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And then you would simply push down this lever and film. Later cameras were even more advanced than this one. This particular camera is a Filmo 70D that is a replica of an identical movie camera used by an American Episcopal

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missionary in the city of Nanjing. And some of you may be familiar with the history of the Rape of Nanjing or the Nanjing Massacre. The only film that was made of military atrocities

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by the Japanese military in Nanjing, in the years 1937 and 1938, was created by that American-Episcopal missionary, using a camera that was identical to this one. The way that you would use this camera,

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being more advanced than the one you just saw, is that you would also wind it up like so. There's a powerful spring on the inside. And you would set your exposure.

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You would set your focusing distance. And then you would be able to film in this way. This camera is more advanced than the last one you saw because it has interchangeable lenses.

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You could actually change your focal length or zoom in or out by turning this turret to switch lenses on the camera between shots. So after you were done making your film

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with one of these cameras, all the film had been used up. You could take it out and spool it up and send it out to any number of film processing stations run by major corporations in Asia or in Europe or the United States.

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German companies, Eastman Kodak in the United States had processing stations in places like Shanghai in China, in Beijing, Nanjing, major cities, as well as in Japan, Singapore, and other parts

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of East and Southeast Asia. So these films would then be sent on for processing, they would be mailed back as soon as they were done, and then people would splice them or edit them

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onto existing reels or raw reels that they had put together and then project them on a projector, much like this one. Now, we have to understand that these projectors required a certain level of technical expertise to set up

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but were essentially designed for anyone, even those with little filmmaking experience, to use. Once you got the general hang of using these projectors, they became fairly self-explanatory

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and would have been used to present films in all sorts of environments. This type of projector would have been used in school classrooms, in churches,

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in meeting halls and areas, both in China and across the Pacific in the United States. And you can imagine that once this projector was set up, the person who made the film or someone associated with the film

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would then narrate the film as it was being projected. And usually this would have been set up for larger audiences, sometimes for families but very rarely for individual private viewing.

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So the act of making film and the act of circulating and presenting film was often a communal experience meant to be enjoyed and thought about and participated in together using technology like this.

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Amateur filmmaking in modern China allows us a ground-level look at what goes on behind the scenes and on the everyday level as national and international histories develop.

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We often tend to think of Chinese history and Sino-Western encounters on large levels, the levels of nationalism, of imperialism, of colonialism, and massive changes in historical dynamics.

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What filmmaking and amateur filmmaking allows us to see is how the everyday person and how environments in China were lived, experienced, imagined, and seen through various technologies

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on the everyday ground level. Macro-level histories of China often represented as a monolith-- yet in looking at these amateur films,

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we are able to see an in everydayness, a way in which local communities, individuals, are looking at themselves and presenting themselves as part of a filmmaking experience that is on the ground

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level, on the micro level. In looking at these types of micro-level experiences, we realise that we're able to see how Indigenous actors self-represent, how they look back at the lens,

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how they are involved in everyday activities on the local level that are also engaging with the act of filmmaking. Therefore, in looking at these images and these films, we are seeing how encounters are shaped,

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how foreign and Indigenous perspectives, Chinese and non-Chinese individuals and communities are coming together and interacting with each other, sometimes in collaboration, sometimes

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in tension, in the lives and afterlives of these films. It's important to realise that these makers, subjects, and audiences are all seeing and imagining themselves as part of different projects, different identities in modern China.

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Some of these projects may be religious. Some of them may be political or economic or cultural. But in seeing these fragments, we can tie them together through the lens of amateur film

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and see how micro and macro-level developments are engaging with each other at the same time in modern China. So the limits and challenges of using film is that they are one type of media

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in a larger constellation of historical documents and traces. I like to think about films as a window in which you can see some parts of history and experience but not all of them.

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There are all of these strands of experience, of imagination, of existence that run through these windows. And with these films, we can trace some of them. Perhaps in using these films and looking at them

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as primary sources, we're able to see fragments of what an everyday experience might have been, what a filmmaking experience might have been, or different types of narratives that were

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happening on the local level. But if you think about them as windows and traces, these lines that run through these frames, there are all sorts of other types of media

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that these films speak to. The challenge involved is putting those pieces together to connect these films to documented history in writing, to other types of visual documentation,

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such as print media and photographs, and also histories on the official as well as the personal or private level that may or may not exist at the same time with these films.

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In putting those pieces together, we're able to see a larger fabric, a larger spectrum of experience that is mediated by the film and in which the film exists.

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These challenges are real, and they're difficult. And yet they hold so much promise in allowing us to see a much more colourful, complicated, and yet dynamic picture of what modern China and Sino-Western

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encounter looks like. In looking at these films, we have to realise that the format of these films has even changed for us as viewers. We in the 21st century are looking at these images

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and these films on devices that really change the ways that these films were originally seen and presented and even created. Our smaller devices and the ways in which we receive these films provide access, but also change the nature of these films.

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They are presented on a private level, on an individual level. And yet, in the moments of their own existence in history, these films were communal documents. They were meant to be presented to larger audiences

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with narration, with community context, with context provided by both the makers as well as sometimes the subjects and the audiences. In doing so, we realise that there are limits to the ways

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that we see these films because they don't exist the same way they did when they were first created and circulated. We have to see them as part of a constellation, part of a spectrum of other types of media, frames

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in which other types of images and textual documents, oral histories, private and public existences, are connected. They run through these frames.

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They exist beyond the frame. Therefore, in thinking about these limitations, we have to work with other sources to add those missing voices, to break through the frame itself,

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and to think about the ways that the format that we see these films in is also part of a historical development in which other voices and other perspectives were once present. The unique quality of studying history through film

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includes the many possibilities that film can provide for research projects and ways of understanding China both on the personal as well as the educational level.

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As we use these films and think about them as primary sources, we're able to understand that film as a historical experience fit into both local and national histories as well as international contacts.

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These films provide us a lens through which we can see these histories, and also understand that we can use them in new ways in studying different parts of China's development over time,

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as well as local experiences and the experiences of individuals and communities involved in this history. I can envision that the film may provide anthropologists with a way of understanding community

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life and local experience in a way that transcends and adds to textual documentation and oral history. Students who are understanding and studying environmental history can trace the development

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of different types of regions and spaces in understanding the film as a fragment of larger environmental trajectories. In addition to these examples, we

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may see narratives from political, cultural, and religious perspectives that add to and complicate our images of what China is as a country and what people in China were thinking about and living

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throughout these periods in history. Because of this, understanding history through film allows us this more colourful-- a richer picture, a way of understanding,

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that transcends conventional ways of looking at history through text and adding these ways of seeing the world in which cameras and filmmaking were also a fundamental part of individual and collective experience.

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The fact that this collection is so eclectic means that it contains surprises for me, and I'm sure for many others, viewing it. As a cultural historian, I am most interested in the ways

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that everyday life in China played out in local interactions as well as international interactions. One of the first films that surprised me in this collection is a pair of fighting chickens that were

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filmed in China around 1913. The subtitles and the title of that film apparently indicate that it was produced for Italian as well as German audiences, who

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may have seen this film as both a comedic representation of China, as well as through Orientalist lenses. And yet, seeing this moment of chickens fighting in China in 1913 also represents that there

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are all sorts of experiences going on in these films. Another film that stands out to me was shot in 1930. It's titled China 2. And it represents a group of boatmen

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having lunch on their boat in the middle of the river on a noon day, kind of gathering. And seeing these men looking back at the camera, eating lunch, reacting to the camera

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with a mix of amusement and surprise and confusion reminds me that there are all sorts of gazes involved in these films, the gaze of the Indigenous person looking back

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at the camera, the maker of the film and the camera person looking back at the Indigenous groups. And this collaborative as well as engaged look at seeing each other on an everyday basis

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is part of what surprises me and fascinates me about these films. And it's like time travel. All of a sudden, you're on a boat in the middle of a Chinese river in 1930,

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watching people have their lunch as they look back at you. And in looking at this film, I am also reminded of another collection of films within the larger collection, the Eng family films that are made by perhaps elite filmmakers

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who are also travelling through China at this time in a personal capacity. And these films contain all sorts of scenes of people gathering, of people bantering and laughing

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with each other, going to different sights and seeing what might be touristic views. But they're a combination of Chinese and foreign individuals who are engaging with each other,

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interacting with each other on a personal level. And the Eng films have all sorts of subjects in them, of factories, of environments, of tourist sights, of travel. And it reminds us that filmmaking

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was part of this larger spectrum of individual and collective experience that continues to surprise and engage us in the accessibility afforded by this collection. So I think the biggest thing that this resource

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is going to provide for research is access, being able to watch these films anywhere on a device, to pause and freeze frame them, to look deeply into what's in the frame and outside the frame.

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These films are going to be accompanied by audio transcriptions and textual transcriptions, allowing wider and broader audiences to access them and to understand them.

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They will be useful for teaching as well as conversation with other types of historical sources. So again, I feel that the accessibility afforded by the collection is its strong suit.

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And we will be able to see these films in ways that their original makers and audiences perhaps never quite intended or could have seen in technological and cultural ways.

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And to be using these films in educational environments is such a tremendous resource that would not have been available to many others before this time.