Au pays des mandarins [In the Land of the Mandarins] (1905) – dir. Auguste François

Catalogue of the Gaumont cinema company announcing the release of ‘Au pays des mandarins’ in May 1905

42 mins, b&w, silent

Source : A version of this film, without introductory titles, is held by the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and is available via its website here. A similar version is also held by the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and is available here.

Short assemblies of this and other footage clearly shot at the same time can also be found – without authorial attribution – on the website of the Gaumont-Pathé Archives (by entering ‘Chine’ and ‘<1910’ into the search engine).

This film is based on a compilation of footage shot by the French Consul, Auguste François, in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, southwest China, in the years 1901-1904. This footage appears to be the first moving images to be shot in China. Although this compilation was released in 1905, some parts of it may have been released earlier.

This film offers a rich account of everyday life in and around Kunming in the last years of the Qing dynasty that is remarkable both for its technical quality and ethnographic variety. In effect, it is a sort of miniature precursor to the ‘city symphonies’ of the 1920s.

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© 2018 Paul Henley