Peking
1938 / B&W / 16mm / 45 min
Director, Original idea, Editing: Kamei Fumio
Photography: Kawaguchi Seiichi
Sound: Fujii Shinichi
Music: Jiang Wenye
Narrator: Matsui Suisei
Producer: Matsuzaki Keiji
Production Company: Culture Films Department, Toho
Source: Yamagata Documentary Film Library
After Shanghai, Kamei depicted the people and culture of Beijing, a city with 3,000 years of tradition. After introducing the Forbidden Palace, Jingshan Park (Coal Hill) and the Temple of Heaven, the camera goes into markets, through shop-filled streets, and down back alleys using long stretches of synchronized sound to show the city’s people. The citizens’ way of life no longer exists and so the film has significant ethnographic import. This film did not exist in Japan, and its content was known only through the publication of the film’s scenario in the June 1938 edition of Eiga hyoron. When Abé Mark Nornes, Coordi-nator for Media Wars: Then & Now at YIDFF ’91 (and currently Associate Professor at the University of Michigan), confirmed the existence of this film at The National Archives in Washington, D.C. in 1998, it was copied and added to the Yamagata Documentary Film Library. 30 minutes of the film are missing, including the beginning of the first reel.