Confucius Dir/Scr: Fei Mu Exe Prod: Jin Xinmin, Tong Zhenmin Cast: Tang Huaiqiu, Chang Yi China / 1940 / B&W / 35mm / Mandarin (Parts of the sound track are missing) / Chi & Eng Subtitles / 87min / (with 9min loose footage)

Confucius had long been considered a lost classic. An extraordinary work that speaks of its time and our past, it was made by the great director Fei Mu during Shanghai's Orphan Island period, when Japanese forces overran much of the city, fencing in the city's foreign concessions. China's screens were dominated then by crude, maudlin costume dramas and producers Jin Xinmin and Tong Zhenmin boldly invested an exceptional budget on the film, determined to improve the quality of Chinese cinema. Confucius, the debut feature of Jin and Tong's Min Hwa Motion Pictures, is remarkably formalistic, its austere mise-en-scene portraying the title character not with sensational heroics but sorrowful dignity. The project was conceived in Hong Kong, where Fei and Jin had fled during the war. That it was rediscovered more than half a century later in the SAR offers again an evocative comment on our history.

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