Whats The Oldest Kf Film You Have Seen Or Heard About

[diego]

Moving pictures was invented in 1880, that implys alot of old school masters could be on tape, if it didn't burn through MAO.
Buddy asked this question on the wc board, but he wanted to know what picture, wich you can answer to, what i would like to know is what is the oldest film in chinese museam &such.
:)

[Ky-Fi]

I'm not that familiar with the history of the Chinese using film for historical documentation, but I do know a little about it's use in the West.

Film did start to become widespread in the late 1800s, but the museum world did not really see it as an important tool in recording history. It was seen more as a novelty, or for entertainment purposes----by the teens and 20's, there was some stuff being done by amateur filmmakers here and there, but it wasn't well organized, and these were not usually trained historians or documenters, and they often didn't realize the potential importance of what they were doing. It wasn't until the 1920's and 1930's that some serious documentary work started to be done by British filmmakers like Hanna and Elton. So, although the value of film seems pretty obvious to us now, as I understand it that wasn't a common perception among historians in the early years of the medium.

I'm not sure if things were different in China or not. I did see a recent documentary on kung fu movies on the Encore cable channel, and they had clips of kung fu movies made in Hong Kong going right back to the silent era in the teens and 20's---but these were feature films, not documentariess of real masters. I guess it's possible that films of old masters exist from this era, but I don't think there's too many of them.

[diego]

Plus the fact KF is so secretive, i think the possibility's are really cool/sad, in that even if thier was footage of Master's in central china in the 1940's, It most likly would have burnt from the deed of CHAIRMAN MAO.