Finding and Using Moving Images In Context

A History of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club, containing maps of the courses run by the expatriates shown in the Branch riding clip from 1934, is offered on Ebay this week. The seller writes to me, “No index in the normal sense but huge indexes of the hunts, steeplechases & point to points. The hunt index contains, for each hunt, the date, who laid the course, the course itself [Start near the corner of Hungjao and Rubicon Roads,Turnabout Jump, Shaw's Turn, along the Soochow Creek to Pearce's Jump.....etc] and finally the finishing runners and riders. I can’t find references to grave mounds but there is a small piece on Chinese resentment. The maps seem to cover the course areas. Viewed the film with interest - made me want to zoom and pan. Regards James.”

Points to consider:
A book I didn’t know existed is in Britain where many of the riders probably returned.
I find the book nearby at Harvard College Library and in Special Collections at the University of North Dakota, where A History of the Shanghai Paper Hunt Club, A Supplement, 1931-1935, and Shanghai Paper Hunter’s Hymn Book are in the papers of Chester Fritz, a partner of our film creator, Joseph E.C. Swan, in Swan Culbertson and Fritz, the brokerage house in Shanghai. http://www.library.und.edu/Collections/og410d.html

The bookseller’s comment, “Viewed the film with interest - made me want to zoom and pan,” encourages our sense that the moving image content has public value and that users may wish to manipulate it for information and pleasure.