Dingjunshan (China, 1905)

Beijing Opera actor Tan Xinpei in the first Chinese movie Dingjunshan (1905).

Dingjun Mountain was a 1905 Chinese silent film directed by Ren Qingtai (任慶泰) a.k.a. Ren Jingfeng (任景豐), who was assisted by his cinematographer Liu Zhonglun (劉仲伦). This film, made by Beijing’s Fengtai Photography (豐泰照相館), constitutes the first Chinese film ever made.

The film consisted of a recording of Peking opera superstar Tan Xinpei dressed in the character Huang Zhong and singing some arie from the Peking opera of the same name. The play is a dramatised account of Battle of Mount Dingjun (219 AD) and based on an episode in the 14th-century historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.

The only print was destroyed in a fire in the late 1940s.

Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingjun_Mountain_(film)

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