Classic Openings of Chinese Film Productions

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The Chinese cinema was a big part of our teenage years.

I for one grew up on a diet of swordfighting and later kung fu movies out of Hong Kong and Taiwan. I know I'm not alone in having childhood action heroes and heroines like Ti Lung, David Chiang, Wang Yu, Cheng Pei Pei, Yueh Hua, Fu Sheng and of course the legendary Bruce Lee. My favourite director was Chang Chieh, who created an exciting, violent style with much displays of screen blood. Chang was also the inspiration for John Woo, who is so successful in Western action cinema today.

Some friends I know liked the more romance type movies starring the likes of Lin Chin Hsia (one of my good friends had a crush on her for years), Chen Chen, Chin Han (one was said to look like him) and others.

Of course, many of us also liked the more comedic actors and actresses, such as Li Kun, the Hui brothers, Lydia Sum and Hu Chin (yes, that sexy, funny lady with a mole on her chin!)

Anyway today I just wanted to let you relive the opening sequence of the two major Chinese film production companies we used to love.

Turn up the volume and play ...

And now this one ...

Doesn't that bring back good memories ?
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Kodachrome

Recently I found an old roll of Kodak film in one of my drawers. Goodness, I haven't seen one of those for quite a while. Ever since digital cameras came onto the scene about ten years ago, I haven't had to bring such rolls of film to the photography studio or kiosk to get them developed.

In those days, Kodak was always my favourite brand of film. I used to prefer Kodak to Fuji or Agfa because I reckon the Kodak colours came out more intense or brighter. Do you remember watching Kodak ads in the cinema or on TV ads, where they talked about the "Kodak moment", meaning a rare, one-time moment that is captured with a photo, or should have been captured with a photo ?

"Kodachrome" is the trademarked brand name of a type of color reversal film that was manufactured by Eastman Kodak from 1935 to 2009. Kodachrome was the first successfully mass-marketed color still film using the so-called "subtractive" method., in contrast to earlier additive "screenplate" methods such as Autochrome and Dufaycolor. Kodachrome remained the oldest brand of color film. As digital photography progressively reduced the demand for film in the 2000s, Kodachrome sales steadily declined and in June 2009 Eastman Kodak announced the end of Kodachrome production.

Inspired by this film, "Kodachrome" was also the name of a very popular song written by Paul Simon (of the singing duo Simon & Garfunkel) around 1973. Can't remember the tune? Here's a treat .... have a listen.

I loved this song as a teenager, and it still brings back very pleasant memories.

During the early years of the 21st century, there was fierce debate among professional photographers on the relative advantages of lens-based cameras over their digital counterparts. I guess in the early generations of digital cameras, it was true that professional lens-based SLRs were much better, but with the rapid advance of digital technology and the ever increasing resolution (in Megapixels) of DSLRs, I find this debate has largely gone silent.

BTW, here are some pictures of old cameras that I recently saw in a shop in HCMC ...

 

Do share your own photographic adventures.