Melting Pot Cinema Part XXIII - A Silent World

The first Spanish film was made in Barcelona in 1900 by Catalan director Fructuoso Gelabert and it centered on a group of workers leaving their factory, much in the vein of the Lumiere short feature La Sortie de l'usine a Lyon (Employees Leaving the Lumiere Factory,1895). Barcelona would remain the epicenter of early Spanish cinema and various documentaries devoted to the art of bullfighting emerged, as would a dramatic film on the subject, Ricardo de Banos' Sangre y Arena (Blood and Sand,1916), which was based on the Vicente Blasco-Ibanez novel. Following the Great War, and in a mood of national despondency instigated by Morocco's defeat in 1921, the Spanish cinema resigned itself to French and American imports, although surrealist Luis Bunuel would establish the first Spanish film society in Madrid in the early 1920's.

By the year 1897, Japanese audiences would become aware of both the Vitascope and the inventions of the Lumiere brothers. But Japan's own early silent cinema was dominated by the presence of benshi (commentators) who sat beside the screen narrating stories at each showing. The tradition in itself was a derivative of Kabuki theater, as was the presence of the female impersonator (oyama); and another stage inheritance that marked the movies was that of the shimpa, a romantic and melodramatic form of 1868's Meiji period. In 1913, Shozo Makino, a producer and director, joined actor Matsunosuke Onoe to make the first of several versions of Chushingura (The Loyal 47 Ronin), and four years later animated cartoons began to emerge from the fledgling studios. In the early part of the 1920's three major directors made their debuts, Teinosuke Kinugasa,Yasujiro Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Kurutta Ippeji (A Page of Madness,1926) was directed by Kinugasa and starred Masuo Inoue and 1928's Jujiro.These were among the finest of Japanese silent productions. But in 1923, a massive earthquake would devastate some of the Tokyo studios and the industry had to start again.

The first Chinese feature, from 1905 - Ding jun shan.

In China on August 11, 1896, less than a year after the first Lumiere screenings in Paris, Shanghai showcased a performance of the new art, but Peking did not come into contact with the cinema until 1902. The first true Chinese film was however shot in Peking; Ding jun shan (Conquering Jun Mountain,1905) which was based on the eponymous opera story. A crucial landmark was the first feature film Nanfu nanqi (A Couple in Difficulty ,1913) directed by Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu a serviceable satire on the tradition of feudal marriages. The industry would branch out and dramatically so between 1915 and 1931, it was in this juncture that three hundred features were produced in thirteen cities, namely Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Ricardo de Banos' inspired  documentary Barcelona en tranvia (1908)

In India, at Watson's Hotel in Bombay in July of 1896, the ubiquitous Lumiere package was screened. At the turn of the twentieth century, entrepreneurs in the names of theater magnate Jamshedji Framji Madan and the Gujurati exhibitor Abdulally Esoofally used spacious tents in which to show French and American shorts. Dhundhiraj Phalke determined to rival these foreign filmmakers and would travel assiduously to gather knowledge and proper equipment. His first major film was the forty-minute  Raja Harischandra (1913) and what followed were to be literally hundreds of productions during the next two decades. Inventive, ebullient, extravagant, Phalke's boundless talents colored the early development of India's cinema. Other film pioneers and first retainers of the Bombay talkies included Dhirendra Nath Ganguly, Chandulal Shah and the Teutonic  Franz Osten who worked on several major German-Indian co-productions, a prime example of this merger was 1925's Prem Sanyas (The Light of Asia). Paradoxically, the Indian industry which in 2014 is the most prolific the world over, was as late as the mid-Twenties dominated by foreign product - and at that time only about ten percent of all films screened in India were domestically produced.

Nobleza prize - Argentina's grande debut

And although the major flourishing of South American cinema occurred after the second World War, the continent does boast a complex and layered history of movies harking back to the first years of the twentieth century. Production in Brazil, for example, exceeded two-hundred films a year in 1909 and 1910, while the Argentinian-Jewish pioneer Max Glucksmann established a vast network of theaters in Chile and Uruguay as well as his native country. The first noteworthy Argentinian feature was Nobleza Gaucha (1915) directed by Eduardo Martinez de la Pera and Ernesto Gunche. A personality who would dominate the Thirties. Jose Augustin Ferreyrra, made his mark in 1917 with El Tango de la Muerto (The Tango of Death).

Mauro's marveloso Sangue Minero (pictured Carmen Santos)

Brazil remained the prime market for European films in the early part of last century, and not until the latter Twenties did American cinema gain a dominant hold. Local filmmakers concentrated on producing newsreels and fiction films that drew heavy influence from local theatrical tradition. Jose Medina is regarded as the most vital pioneer of entertainment films in Brazil, and worked from studios in Sao Paulo.And later, Humberto Mauro would turn out the beguiling Sangue Mineiro in 1929.

The inaugural Australian film was a horse-racing newsreel focusing on Melbourne's Cup of 1890; it was ironically made by the Frenchman and once chemist, Marius Sestier. Four years later, also in Melbourne, the Salvation Army made Soldiers of the Cross in 1900, at about 3000 feet was most likely the longest film anywhere in the world at the time. And even lengthier, was The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) at possibly over 5000 feet. Other bushranger films would follow the Ned Kelly epic, among them, 1907's Robbery Under Arms, based on Rolf Boldrewood's novel and the convict days up to 1850 were reenacted in such films as Charles MacMahon's lost For The Terms of His Natural Life (1908).