Sailors’ club has a role in cinema history
Print Edition
A FORMER sailors’ club built in 1902 by the Germans is believed to be China’s earliest cinema still in existence.
That was the conclusion of researchers from the China Film Association and the China National Film Museum, based on archives retrieved during a two-year renovation which is due to finish this month.
The auditorium on the first floor of the three-story wooden building in Qingdao, in east China’s Shandong Province, served as the cinema.
After examining archives that include information on tickets, advertisements and timetables, they believe the club was screening films from at least 1907 to 1914.
The audience was primarily made up of sailors and club staff. Locals and German soldiers joined later. Among more than 850 movies that were screened, almost half were documentaries, followed by German scenery and political and educational movies, according to Han Mingsheng, who led the research team.
The club was designed in 1899 under the stewardship of Albert Wilhelm Heinrich (1862-1929), or Prince Henry of Prussia, after Qingdao fell under 17 years of German colonization.
Its primary function was to entertain the 2,000-plus German sailors based in Qingdao, Germany’s only base in the Far East at that time.
After 1914, the building was used by the Japanese and then as a US navy club.
Qingdao Urban Development Group Co Ltd, the current owner, is planning to turn the club into a modern-day cinema.
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