The Festival takes part in the Year of China as one of its very first events. This an opportunity to know more about a cinema which still has a few surprises in store for us, especially as regards the flourishing period prior to the Communist take-over in 1949. Until then China went through troubled times, with the Japanese invasion (in 1931) which fostered civil war. In spite of such a context, pre-1949 Chinese cinema was very active. It started developing in Shanghai in the 1920s, especially a...