River Scenery China

Beautiful panoramas of a busy Chinese wharf evoke the river life of yore.

These beautiful panoramas of a busy wharf (somewhere) in China evoke the river life of yore: sampans sail serenely by, rowing boats laden with passengers and cargo jostle for a mooring on the stone pier, and stevedores lump heavy cargo on their backs to shore. Some curious cargo too – look out for the gentleman wearing a pith helmet apparently carrying a gramophone horn.

We’ve almost no background information on the making of this film. But its style and subject are similar to Riverside Scenes in China (c.1922) – long takes, wide-angle shots, a fixed tripod, ‘in camera’ editing, and a nautical theme. Could we hazard a guess that the two are related? Perhaps they are fragments of production footage for an unrealised project?