Chinese Cinema

Shanghai was a well-known filmmaking centre in the twenties and thirties, a history that is important and influential in the work of Yang Fudong.  He cites Muzhi’s Street Angel, of the leftist film-making era, as a personal influence.  The film combines melodrama and comedy to tell the story of two sisters who have fled from the war in Northeast China to Shanghai, where they are coerced into a life of corruption under the brutal rule of their adoptive parents.

Image: Still from Street Angel, Yuan Muzhi (1937) 91 mins