Renowned filmmaker Christopher Doyle narrates this uniquely vivid picture of Chinese history through film, compiled with exclusive access to the British Film Institute China collection. These never-seen-before films provide new insights into China’s momentous changes, from the first ever Chinese film in the Qing dynasty through to the Communist era.

This second episode includes the first-ever colour film recorded of China, capturing the sacred and the profane in 1930’s Beijing. Other filmmakers show Shanghai in the jazz age, but these film reels reveal a China that might have been – China before the Japanese invaded. The cameras document the struggle for China. Just as Shanghai’s Nanjing Road was filmed in 1900, so it was filmed 50 years later, as the victorious People’s Liberation Army parades along it, Mao Zedong’s portrait to the fore.

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