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In recent years, FIAF affiliates have been searching for "lost" films, produced in their native countries during preceding decades. Archives are eager to trace such films in order to fill gaps in their national cultural heritage. Although it is possible to read contemporary accounts of many productions, the films themselves are no longer available to be shown to today's audiences. It is difficult for archives to know where to begin to look for materials outside their own countries so it is important for FIAF affiliates, both locally and internationally, to search their collections for "lost" titles and enable them to be repatriated to their countries of origin.
As a member of FIAF, the China Film Archive (CFA) has been cooperating with regional and internatioal partners in the search for lost titles and is pleased to have been involved in the repatriation of a few films recently rediscovered. Here are four examples.
PAN SI DONG (1927)
April 15 2014 is a significant date in the history of the preservation of Chinese film, as it was the day that saw the homecoming of Pan Si Dong (1927), also known as The Cave of the Silken Web, a film which had been considered lost for more than 80 years. On that day, Roger Josevold, Deputy National Librarian of the National Library of Norway, officially handed over a print of the film to the Deputy Director of the China Film Archive, Sun Xianghui,
Pan Si Dong, based on Xi You Ji (Journey to the West, attributed to Wu Cheng'en and considered as one of the four great classic novels of Chinese literature), was produced in 1926 under the direction of Chinese film pioneer, Dan Duyu. It had its premiere in Shanghai in 1927 and was subsequently screened in Norway in 1929, the first-ever Chinese film to be shown there. Pan Si Dong, regarded as an early national treasure of Chinese film history,...