Originally published by Cluster, written by YuQi Han.

This is the age when all cities are pervaded by images and all images are soaked with city elements. The images, especially moving pictures, exert a subtle but profound influence on the sustainability of city memory.
Shanghai is considered an enchanting city. With a short history, her charm and magic come from her special and irreplaceable style.
In the first half of 20th century, the glamour of China’s films was mainly in Shanghai which is the representative of the development of China’s neoteric movies. Furthermore, Shanghai’s movie industry is closely related to the development of the Shanghai city and culture.

Now, let’s leave the glamorous yesterday and focus on today’s development of Shanghai Modern Images.
The digital technology has become a cradle of the city’s image. In Shanghai, nearly everyone can take up the camera or DV to record the happenings in this city. The young directors are growing.

Documentaries
Shanghai has witnessed great changes in these years. In this background, the citizens’ happiness and sadness and their stories are the epitome of the profound changes that city development brings to people’s lives and mentality. Therefore, Shanghai’s documentary film directors, especially young people, focus their lens to the changes of the city. Combined with the directors’ own emotions and memories, these documentaries have great visual and emotional impacts and historical values. The outstanding ones among this type a Idle People in Society, Living,

No. 10 Qinguan Road, Nostalgia, Guardian of City Memories, and The Other Shore of the Dream .Some directors turned the visual angle to the minority groups in the south-west China. The rapid development of the city makes people more and more money oriented, the tradition lost and the new mentality established, which causes some directors to focus on the minority groups’ traditional and natural life styles. Documentaries such as Blossoming In The Wind, The Face,

and The World Cup
2006 And Little Buddha not only record their lives, but express the directors’ thoughts about the development of cities.Movies
Shanghai’s young local directors tend to make movies on special stories of the city, which is full of adventures and interest. Movies like Hero, Encounter, But I Know, Satsuyume are very colorful, unique and visually audacious. Behind the adventurous images, the directors are making their own dreams.The out-of-town directors who live in Shanghai use movie as a way to express themselves, which is due to their living conditions in this city. These directors put their own experiences into the plots, and the films express that the city immigrant’s loss, seeking and assurance, such as Give me a Bed. The out-of-town directors’ thoughts and expressions about city life open another window to view the city we live in, which is the living condition of ecdemic people.Other out-of-town directors tells us the stories of their hometowns in their movies such as

The Red Kites and Be Laid to Rest . Living in cities, the directors cannot forget their childhood and hometown. The artistic or plain images in their movies express their nostalgia, which provide another reference to city life.Nowadays, the image industry in Shanghai has just begun. There’s no cinema devoted to showing independent films, apart from the little support from universities. However, there’s no communication and interaction among universities and the movies that they show are usually in the market.In fact, international film festivals are paying great attention to China’s movies, but their source is limited, which prevents them from getting some of the valuable images.As a nongovernmental agent that promotes Shanghai’s cultural industry and regarded as the “smallest cinema in Shanghai”, Image Tunnel is the only place in Shanghai which shows independent films. From 2007, Image Tunnel began to pay attention to and support the independent film industry in Shanghai. The Saturday Movie has become a regular activity, which brings the directors and the audience together, providing them with a chance to communicate face to face. Furthermore, there’re reviews on Image Tunnel’s blog and e-magazine.

Let’s hope that with the development of the city and the growing attention from intellectuals, Shanghai’s image art will become a promising industry.

www.imagetunnel.com