Research Guides: Collections and Resources on China: Images &amp; Films

Chinese films @ EAL

Chinese films are available at various libraries in the U of T library system, such as the East Asian Library and the Media Commons Library. Search the library catalogue to look for specific film titles.

EAL Chinese films retrieved from the catalogue
This is a list of Chinese films available at the East Asian Library, retrieved from the library catalogue. You may further limit the list to feature films, documentary films, and so on, by clicking on various facets listed under "Subject" or other "Refine Your Search" categories on the left side. Enjoy exploring!

Asian Film Online This link opens in a new window
Asian Film Online offers a view of Asian culture as seen through the lens of the independent Asian filmmaker. Through a selection of over 1,000 narrative feature films, documentaries and shorts curated by film scholars and critics, the collection offers highly relevant perspectives and insights onto themes relevant across Asia, including modernity, globalization, female agency, social and political unrest, and cultural and sexual identity.
Anthropology Online This link opens in a new window
Anthropology Online of Alexander Street Press brings together a wide range of written ethnographies, field notes, seminal texts, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human behavior the world over. In particular, it has documentaries about the Chinese as a cultural group: http://search.alexanderstreet.com.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/anthropology/search?ff[0]=world_cultural_group_discussed_facet%3AChinese&f[0]=format_facet%3AVideo

Online film resources

Chinese Film and Newsreel Scripts from the Cultural Revolution Online
Documentary films and newsreels, produced by official central film studios of China, were major mass media channels of China between the 1950’s through the 1970’s. This collection mainly consists of transcripts for the documentary films and newsreels produced between the 1940s and the 1980s, especially from the Cultural Revolution era.
Chinese Film Classics
This is a research and learning project led by Christopher Rea. The website makes available a number of early Chinese films, with related academic literature and resources.
Internet Archive: Chinese Feature Films of the Moving Image Archive
This is a collection of Chinese films in the Moving Image Archive (of the Internet Archive).
Internet Archive: Feature Films of the Moving Image Archive
Internet Archive: Moving Image Archive
This digital library contains digital movies uploaded by users of the Internet Archive, which range from classic full-length films, to daily alternative news broadcasts, to cartoons and concerts. Many of these videos are available for free download.
Youtube - Modern Chinese Cultural Studies
This is the Youtube channel Videos on modern Chinese culture, created and selected by Christopher Rea (雷勤風), Professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian Studies of the University of British Columbia.

Image resource and guides @ U of T

Please also refer to the general guide, Images and Visual Resource Collections, for comprehensive information on image resources at U of T and on the open Internet.

China: Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980 This link opens in a new window
The database offers over 400 colour paintings, maps, and drawings by English and Chinese artists, as well as countless photographs, sketches and ephemeral items, depiciting Chinese people, places, customs and events.
China: Culture and Society This link opens in a new window
Images are browsable in the Visual Resources Gallery under the tab ,"Further Resources".

Online image resources

Chinese Posters, Propaganda, Politics, History, Art
Chineseposters is a continually growing web-database that presents Chinese propaganda posters through vitural exhibitions, theme presentations, etc. Most of the featured posters are from the collections of Stefan Landsberger and the Interantional Institute of Social History (IISH, Amsterdam, Netherlands). The website is maintained by the Chinese Posters Foundation.
Historical Chinese Postcard Project: 1896 - 1920
This database project studies the first wave of postcards with a Chinese subject. Users not only find images of the postcards, but also their historical context information about what they are, who produced them and where, how they were used, and what's their significance. The growing collection focuses on early (1896-1920) postcards of China with the bulk back to the time of the late imprial (before 1911).
Historical Photographs of China
Chinese Pamphlets (連環畫): Political communication and mass education in the early period of the People's Republic of China
The database has mass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai, in the years 1947-1954. These cartoon books, pamphlets, postcards and magazines, on topics such as foreign threats to Chinese security, Chinese relations with the Soviet Union, industrial and agricultural production, and marriage reform, were produced by both Kuomintang (Nationalist) and Gongchantang (Communist) supporters.
Chinese Rubbings (拓片)
1067 full-image reproductions of Chinese rubbings held by the Harvard-Yenching Library. Detailed information is available for each rubbing in the VIA catalogue, and links to the image files appear in HOLLIS and VIA. Click on the link above to search Harvard's HOLLIS for materials available.
Historical Photographs of China 1870-1950
This project results from a collaboration between scholars at the University of Bristol, University of Lincoln, the Institut d'Asie Orientale and TGE-Adonis. It aims to locate, archive, and disseminate photographs from the substantial holdings of images of modern China held mostly in private hands overseas.
Wartime China, 1942-1946 -- Joseph Needham Photographs
Dr. Joseph Needham was sent by the British Council to Southwest China in February 1943, to aid the anti-Japanese war effort there. He stayed until April 1946, by when he had travelled extensively throughout Sichuan, Yunnan, and other parts of South, Southwest and Northwest China that was not under Japanese occupation. He took over 1,000 photographs during the period, which have been digitized and made available online by the Needham Research Institute.
Images of Formosa
Images of Formosa is part of Formosa -- Nineteenth Century Images, a digital library that aims to gather primarily European and American images of the island of Taiwan.
Chinese Papercuts (文革中國剪紙)
Chinese Papercuts features a stunning collection of rare propaganda papercuts dating to the Chinese Cultural Revolution at the University of Michigan.
Travels in Southwest China, 1899-1917: The archive of Fritz and Hedwig Weiss
This is the online photo exhibition launched by CrossAsia at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin that presents photographs from the Fritz and Hedwig Weiss Archive that contains photographs and documents donated by Tamara Wyss, granddaughter of Fritz and Hedwig Weiss.Fritz Weiss was German consul in China and Hedwig Weiss-Sonnenburg was a travel writer and the author of children’s books. They lived in Southwest China during the years between the end of the Qing dynasty and China’s entry into the First World War. The exhibition presents a selection of the photographs from the Weiss archive that show landscapes, people and their life in secluded mountainous areas, river valleys and minority areas.

Research Guides

Collections and Resources on China

Chinese films @ EAL

Online film resources

Image resource and guides @ U of T

Online image resources

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