Dir & Scr: Hou Yao
Cinematographer: Liang Linguang, Lai Man-wai
Cast: Lam Cho-cho, Lee Dan-dan, Ge Cijiang
Based on Romance of the West Chamber and shot entirely on location in regions south of the Yangtze, the film demonstrated skilful camera movement and editing, and a compelling narrative of the scholar-beauty genre with a fantastical Arabian Nights-esque touch, aesthetically in no way inferior to the West. Lost in wartime, a nitrate print of the 50-minute European version of this film has been in the collection of the Nederlands Filmmuseum. The museum sent two copies of the photochemically restored version to China and Taiwan in 1992 and its colour print was duplicated by the Hong Kong Film Archive in 2003 and scanned digitally in 2014. Chinese intertitles were added replacing the original French, using the illustrations in the film brochure as reference. A segment with original French intertitles will be shown in this screening.