A video exhibition of the Shanghai-Paris Dialogue with the theme of "A River and a City" opened at the Paris Humanities Exchange Center on the banks of the Seine River in Paris on April 19.
It is one of a series of activities in the program: "Our Water: a global city dialogue started in Shanghai."
Paris is the birthplace of world cinema, where the Lumière Brothers held the world's first public movie screening at the end of 1895.
Shortly after, Shanghai held the first movie screening in China's history, including documentary images from France.
Early videos taken on the Suzhou and Seine Rivers can be seen in this thematic exhibition, including the Lumière Brothers' Panorama des rives de la Seine (Panorama of the Seine, Paris), 1897; the Thomas Edison Company's Shanghai Scene (1898), shot in 1898 on the south side of the Garden Bridge of Shanghai over the Suzhou River; and "The People's Shanghai," a documentary made by the Soviet director Sergei Gerasimov in cooperation with Chinese filmmakers.
In addition, the exhibition features a miniature model of the "Shen Yu Li," a Shanghai-style building on the banks of the Suzhou River, which will be reproduced in the Paris gallery, giving the audience a glimpse of the new appearance of the Suzhou River through aerial photography.
Several documentary film screenings and discussions will be held during the same period of the exhibition.
Some documentaries produced in Shanghai and overseas will be presented to the audience, including several TV documentaries produced by the Shanghai Media Group, a series of short documentaries produced by the Shanghai Federation of Social Science Associations, a documentary created by a Dutch director in 1957, and a special compilation by GP Archives for this screening.
Manuela Padoan, representative of the French partner and general manager of GP Archives, said she was looking forward to this image exchange between the two cities in her opening speech,
"Thanks to Shanghai for bringing the Suzhou River to Paris, we hope to bring the Seine River to Shanghai and China through the 'Our Water' project," she said.

An audience watches early videos of the Seine.

A visitor enjoys the exhibition.

The calendar of the program 'Our water.'
Source: Shanghai Daily