The Battle of Dingjunshan (1905)

Original title

定軍山

Directed by

Jingfeng Ren

Genre

silent film

Country

Qing dynasty

Runtime

42 min

Rating

9.5 of 10 from 2 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This is the first Chinese film ever made. It records a Peking opera superstar performing scenes from a historical battle.

stagedfragmentedhistoricaltheatricalbriefsilentarchival

What happens

Dingjun Mountain《定军山》(pinyin: Dìngjūn Shān) was a 1905 Chinese silent film directed by Ren Qingtai (任慶泰), also known as Ren Jingfeng (任景豐), who was assisted by his cinematographer Liu Zhonglun (劉仲伦). This film, made by Beijing's Fengtai Photography (豐泰照相館), constitutes the first Chinese film ever made. The film consisted of a recording of Peking opera superstar Tan Xinpei dressed in the character Huang Zhong and singing some arias from the Peking opera of the same name. The play is a dramatised account of Battle of Mount Dingjun (219 AD) and is based on an episode in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The only print was destroyed in a fire in the late 1940s. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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