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CHARLOTTE BROOKS: So my name is Charlotte Brooks. I'm a professor of history at Baruch College, which is part of the City University of New York. And I study Chinese-American history

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mainly, as well as US-China relations and Republican China. So the Westerners whose films comprise the vast majority of the films in this collection were in China for a grab bag of reasons.

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Some were actually professional filmmakers there to make a short feature film that would later be shown in Western movie theatres in the United States or Europe-- and sort of exotic views of China.

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Other filmmakers were just amateurs. They were people who were tourists, sometimes honeymooners, sometimes people travelling around the world, sometimes business people who were

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on vacation or just wanted to show the China that they saw to their friends and family back in the United States or Europe. So the professional filmmakers who created the films-- most of them probably short features shown in European movie

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theatres-- is that they emphasise a China that conforms to Western stereotypes of ancientness, backwardness, China as a static and unchanging society. And, of course, the contrast is with the supposedly

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modern, progressive, technologically superior West. And so these films were being shown to viewers in European theatres who most likely never would have visited China. And so they don't really necessarily welcome any,

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probably, challenges to their stereotypes or their ideas of the position of Europe versus China and the world. But what's funny about the same films that

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are trying to emphasise Chinese inferiority, in a way, is that despite the fact that they focus on old technology or old rituals, if you look behind those in the actual film,

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you can see a changing China. You can see streets filled with trams and cars. You can see people with all kinds of different clothing, including a growing number of people wearing

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Western-style clothing, young students going to Western-style schools. And so while these films are made to, in a sense-- and I don't even know if the filmmakers were aware of it,

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but they're just conforming to their views and their society's views of China at the time. At the same time, what they're doing with the actual film is contradicting the words of the narrator

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about this ancient, backward, traditional society. The professional films, I think, made an impact on the amateur filmmakers who eventually did arrive in China on a grand tour, or a honeymoon,

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or a business trip, or just to live there. And I think that you can see that, in part, just because of where most of the films are set. There was sort of a limited, narrow range of places

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that most Westerners could visit in China, both because of the transit that was available to get to these places and also just because there were only a few places where there were hotels that were equipped

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to host Western tourists, and where the various Chinese governments over this period would allow Westerners to travel. And so you see a lot of the same places,

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a lot of the same images, even a lot, I guess you could call them, of the same tropes-- the emphasis on places that were grand but ancient, like the Forbidden City in Beijing,

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or this emphasis on allegedly backward technology. The films, both the professional films and the tourist films, often feature water wheels, where people are using foot pedalled water

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wheels to move water into their fields, almost as a symbol of the backward Chinese methods of farming. And yet, one of the things that the amateur films do

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that the professional ones don't is they tend to linger. They often focus for a very long time on street scenes, or on somebody packing up a package that a tourist has purchased, or just sitting in the back of a rickshaw--

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which was actually a pretty common way of travelling in Chinese cities. And so I think in a way, they offer a more interesting portrayal of Chinese cities that were touched by Westerners

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than the professional films, because they're not as choppy and curated, and they inadvertently give you a lot wider version of people on the streets, of just life in these real contact zones

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where you had Westerners and Chinese mingling in the same places. There are a number of films in this collection, the professionally-made ones, that really capture

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the Western view of China and the way it starts to change by, really, the wartime and after World War II. So the first one I really noticed, and that jumped out at me and frankly made

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me laugh a little bit, was this film called A Half Hour In Old China. Because it does parade out all of these stereotypes about China being backward, and traditional, and ancient,

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and to prove them, it shows a scene from a village. And it says, "This village has been untouched by Western civilization." And yet, if you look at this village street scene,

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you find about six examples of ways that it reflects Western influence. There is a man walking down the street wearing a Western-style hat, smoking a cigarette, which

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is a Western product. Then you see that the street is lit by kerosene lamps, which were, again, lit by kerosene sold by Standard Oil. And that was a major part of that economy of China

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and Sino-foreign trade. And there are a lot of different ways that this film undermines its own credibility, but also shows the way that the Western filmmakers

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are capturing a changing China, not a static China, and contradicting their argument. And, in fact, there's a particularly interesting part of the second part of the film where the filmmakers visit

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Sun Yat-Sen's Memorial. And bear in mind, Sun Yat-Sen was probably the most recognisable Chinese of his time when this film was made.

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And yet, when they show a picture of Sun Yat-Sen at the Memorial-- and he'd been dead for a few years at this point, but again, very famous-- it's actually not Sun Yat Sen.

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I don't know who the picture is, but it's definitely not him. So the film is this grab bag of stereotypes, unintentionally funny, and delegitimizes itself, especially if you'd have been a Chinese viewer, which probably

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would not have happened. But I think Chinese would have found this very funny. However, you see Western professional filmmakers having to grapple with change, even though they struggle

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to do so, because during World War II, China was a very important ally in the war against Japan. And one of the things that, in fact, a lot of the Allies had to do, was they had to figure out

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a way to make the case to their various publics in the United States where, for a long time, Chinese had been excluded for racial reasons from immigrating. Now there's a film from 1946 called Frontline of Democracy,

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where it's actually essentially trying to make the case for why China is going to be this modern, forward-thinking ally of the United States.

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And, of course, the unspoken fact here is that the Cold War has begun. The United States is manoeuvring for position in East Asia and trying to build up the Republic of China

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as its key ally in East Asia. This is right at the beginning, actually, of the Chinese Civil War. And yet, the filmmakers hold on to some of these old stereotypes

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and describe ancient China and its traditions, and yet it's forward-thinking and modern. And it's a real strain. They're very, very reluctant to give up those old ideas, which

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would have had, actually, substantial appeal to a lot of American viewers. But they're also trying in this film to make a case for China as this key modern ally in this new war of position

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in the post-War world. Watching these films, I did have a few favourites, for reasons that were more just about the pleasure of watching a view of China that I don't think exists anymore.

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So despite the problems of the films-- and some of the professional films, in particular, that are extremely stereotyping-- I found this film that I just chose because I

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wondered about the title. It's from the 1920s and it's called Oriental Venice. The title itself makes me wince a little, but watching it, I realised that it was one of the early attempts to colourise

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a film with that sort of gauzy tint. And it essentially is just a boat trip through a Chinese tourist site, which was on the way to a mountain resort called Moganshan.

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And you're just travelling through a canal on a boat. And the colorization of it makes it seem, in a way, as if you're there. And I think a lot of historians probably fantasise

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about time travel to the places that we write about. And so I was unexpectedly delighted by this film, and I watched it several times with a goofy grin on my face thinking, wow, just travelling on this canal,

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I could imagine that. People fishing on the banks, people leaning over the bridges-- it was just kind of fun, even though the end

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is a little cringeworthy. I try to avoid the titles and just sort of enjoy the actual filmmaking. And then, I think the other one that got me,

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just because of the symbolism of it and the time it was made, there was an amateur film from March of 1937. And it is in Beijing, and March of 1937 was just a few months before the outbreak of the Second

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Sino-Japanese War, which broke out very close to where that film was made. And it was just a tourist view of Beijing at this moment that I know is the very last gasp of China

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at relative peace before eight years of horrible war, and then four years of terrible Civil War. And it was just beautiful to look at. But at the same time, as I said, it's sort of poignant knowing

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what was to come. But knowing that the filmmakers and the people on the streets would have no idea that was to come, something about that really got me as a historian.

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I think that this resource could really aid research in a number of ways. If you keep in mind, for example, that the films do not capture all of China--

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which at this time, in the early 20th century, was extraordinarily diverse, as it still is. It's a huge country. What you see in these films, for researchers

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who want to know more about the Western presence in China, these films illustrate that. They also show a changing China if you know what to look for, or just are willing to ignore the narrators

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in the professional films and just watch the street scenes, look at the technology, and think about what you're seeing rather than what they tell you you're seeing. I think these films are actually a really useful resource

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for people who want to look at and understand tourism in China, which is something we don't know a huge amount about for this period. That was something that was developing.

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And it didn't just involve Westerners, but it also involved wealthier Chinese who were touring these traditional beauty spots. And so I think all of those are ways that you

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could use this in research. In addition, I think there's a lot there about the end of empire for places like Britain. Britain had this immense impact in Shanghai,

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and there are films in the collection that show British soldiers arriving in Shanghai to protect foreign-controlled areas. You also see American soldiers and Marines doing the same.

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And what you see in these films, I think, is really useful information for those studying the way that the foreign powers in China explained their presence, tried to understand their presence and justify it.

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At the same time that British power was starting to decline in China, the United States policy towards China was beginning to transform. And so I think these are all interesting documents

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about change, even though so often the filmmakers who are presenting them professionally, or the amateur filmmakers, thought that what they were capturing was stasis and tradition.