However, it didn’t prevent Chinese filmmakers from making films, though many of them escaped to Hong Kong. One of the main factors at that time (1931 – 1945) was the Japanese occupation of China.
The most celebrated Chinese directors of that time were Mu-jih Yuan (Street Girl/Malu tianshi 1934) and Wancang Bu (A Spray of Plum Blossoms/ Yi jian mei 1931). Many actors gained the status of a film star ( Ruan Lingyu, Hu Die, Jin Yan). Shanghai, the capital city of the Chinese film industry, was also the leader in its film production. The years 1933-1937 are called the first „golden era” of Chinese cinema. The national socialistic movement brought such movies as Spring Silkworms/Chun can (1933) and To the Northwest/Dao xi bei qu (1934) by Bugao Cheng or Goddess/Shen nu (1934) by Wu Yonggang. The directors creating in Mandarin, the official language stayed within the circle of the official authorities and their directives. The Cantonese speaking directors moved to Hong Kong which has been a mainstay for the commercial cinema, independent from the government’s dictate ever since. Moreover, it was also the time when sound first appeared in the cinema, which complicated film production and decentralised the film business. The main subject, of the films, became the class warfare and the awakening of the Chinese national spirit against the foreign menace. The situation in the whole country and, therefore, also in the Chinese cinematography changed in 1927 when Kuomintang came to power in the country. The films produced at that time were mostly melodramas, family dramas and screen versions of Chinese legends. Its most prominent hits were Zhang Xinsheng (1922) and Orphan Rescues Grandfather (1923), both made by Zhang Shichuan. One of them was Mingxing Film Company founded by Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan. During the 1920s the first movie production companies, based exclusively on the native capital, were founded in Shanghai.
The centre of Chinese film, at the time, was Shanghai, where the first movie theatre was built in 1908. It was the year when the opera The Battle of Dingjunshan, staged successfully at the Beijing Opera, was recorded for the very first time. The history of Chinese cinematography first started in 1905.
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