Editing Cinema of China (section)

=== Beginnings ===
[[File:Lady Meng Jiang - Tianyi magazine.jpg|thumb|upright|1926 [[Tianyi Film Company|Tianyi]] film ''[[Lady Meng Jiang]]'', starring [[Hu Die]]]]

[[Motion pictures]] were introduced to China in 1896. They were introduced through foreign film exhibitors in [[treaty ports]] like Shanghai and Hong Kong.<ref name=":13">{{Cite book |last=Li |first=Jie |title=Cinematic Guerillas: Propaganda, Projectionists, and Audiences in Socialist China |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |year=2023 |isbn=9780231206273}}</ref>{{Rp|page=68}}

China was one of the earliest countries to be exposed to the medium of film, due to [[Auguste and Louis Lumière|Louis Lumière]] sending his cameraman to Shanghai a year after inventing [[cinematography]].<ref name=":03">{{Cite book |last=Ye, Tan |title=Historical dictionary of Chinese cinema |date=2012 |publisher=The Scarecrow Press, Inc |others=Zhu, Yun, 1979- |isbn=978-0-8108-6779-6 |location=Lanham |oclc=764377427}}</ref> The first recorded screening of a motion picture in China took place in [[Shanghai]] on 11 August 1896 as an "act" on a variety bill.<ref>Berry, Chris. "China Before 1949", in ''The Oxford History of World Cinema'', edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (1997). Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 409.</ref> The first Chinese film, a recording of the [[Peking opera]], ''[[Dingjun Mountain (film)|Dingjun Mountain]]'', was made in November 1905 in [[Beijing]].<ref name="Geiselmann2">{{cite web |author=Martin Geiselmann |year=2006 |title=Chinese Film History - A Short Introduction |url=http://www.univie.ac.at/Sinologie/repository/ueLK110_ChinFilmgesch/filmgeschichteSkript.pdf |access-date=2007-07-25 |publisher=The University of Vienna- Sinologie Program}}</ref> For the next decade the production companies were mainly foreign-owned, and the domestic film industry was centered on Shanghai, a thriving [[entrepot]] and the largest city in the [[Far East]].<ref name=":Qian2">{{Cite book |last=Qian |first=Ying |title=Revolutionary Becomings: Documentary Media in Twentieth-Century China |date=2024 |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |isbn=9780231204477 |location=New York, NY}}</ref>