Zhao Dan

Red Crag (1965)

A taut wartime thriller, Red Crag: Life in Eternal Flame anticipates the paranoia and violence of the imminent Cultural Revolution while harking back to the aesthetic splendour of the Golden Age Shanghai cinema of the late 1940s. (This opulence is largely ...

Nie Er (1962)

Shot in gorgeous color, this fascinating communist flipside to fifties Hollywood music biopics chronicles the life and tragic early death of Nie Er, the composer of the PRC's national anthem. ...

The Opium Wars (1959)

China 1839. Because the British imports of opium into Southern China are creating such widespread medical and economic problems, the weak Manchu emperor Tao Kuang is forced to take action that precipitates the 'Opium War'. ...

Soul of the Sea (1958)

The sailors on a Kuomintang warship revolt, arrest their officers and defect to the Chinese People's Liberation Army. ...

For Peace (1956)

A professor of East China University and his family become supporters of the Communists after America supports the Nationalists. ...

Li Shizhen (1956)

This biography film is based on the life of the real historical figure Li Shizhen.The story focuses on the social injustices suffered by Li as well as the difficulties he overcame in writing the famous Encyclopedia of Herbs. ...

Husband and Wife (1951)

An absorbing example of genre filmmaking in the People's Republic of China, Husband and Wife could at first glance be mistaken for any other romantic melodrama chronicling the rise and decline of a married couple's love; here, though, that love takes place ...

The Life of Wu Xun (1951)

The life-story of Wu Xun, a beggar in the Qing dynasty who set up free schools for poor children. ...

The Winter of Three Hairs (1949)

San mao (3 hairs) was a very popular Chinese comic strip first published in 1935-37, continued from 1948 into the 1990s, about a young orphan boy struggling with life in Shanghai. ...

Crows and Sparrows (1949)

A story of a corrupt party official who attempts to sell an apartment building he has appropriated from the original owner and the struggles of the tenants to prevent themselves being thrown onto the street. ...

Three Girls (1949)

The life of a Shanghai textile worker is destroyed after she is raped by two drunken Japanese soldiers. ...

Far Away Love (1948)

After a break-up, a college professor, Xiao, molds his maidservant, Yu, into an independent, modern woman, then marries her. However, their relationship is interrupted by the war - Yu insists on volunteering her help, while Xiao longs for a stable family l ...

Rhapsody of Happiness (1947)

Wang, a bankrupt farmer joins his cousin, Wu, in Shanghai, but finds that he is poor too. One day, Wu stops a woman - Zhang, a drug runner - from being run down by a car, and is hospitalized. During his recovery, Wu slims down due to the amount of drugs he ...

Street Angel (1937)

In old Shanghai, two sisters, a prostitute and a singer, try to escape from the local scoundrels with the help of a trumpet player and a newspaper seller. ...

Crossroads (1937)

Four students in Shanghai have recently finished university. All are unemployed. Xu contemplates suicide but his friend Zhao talks him out of it. Zhao lives in a shabby room with just a flimsy wall of planks separating him from the room behind. Miss Yang, ...

The Classic for Girls (1934)

A hostess in Shanghai invites her secondary schoolmates to a reunion. They each reminisce about their lives, with some having difficulties in marriage or career. Some led destructive lives, while others contributed to the country. ...

Twin Sisters (1934)

Twin girls separated at birth are reunited when the one raised in poverty becomes a servant in the household of her sister, now the pampered wife of a warlord general. ...

Two Versus One (1933)

Shanghai Over 24 Hours (1933)

Crows and Sparrows (1949)

A story of a corrupt party official who attempts to sell an apartment building he has appropriated from the original owner and the struggles of the tenants to prevent themselves being thrown onto the street. ...