Peter Ditmanson has written text to accompany the Joan Branch Collection Paper Chase footage. His essay is currently with the Primary Source lesson plan team; it is also in the NHF interface mockup below, and over at Harvard for Jascha Smilack’s Branch Collection page development.
Copy for Paper Chase clip for Northeast Historic Film NEH Digital Startup Project
by Peter Ditmanson, East Asian Studies and History, Colby College
The Shanghai Paper Hunt Club was an emblem of continuous powerful presence of the British and other westerners in Shanghai. The Club typified the remarkable detachment of the foreign community to the turbulent events taking place in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Founded in the 1860s in the midst of the Taiping Rebellion (1850-64), the Club thrived through revolutions, warlord control, communist insurgency and suppression, the Japanese occupation and civil war.
Northeast Historic Film is located at the 1916 Alamo Theatre in Bucksport, Maine. Karan Sheldon, NHF co-founder, is project director for Finding and Using Moving Images in Context.