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The History of Cinema: 1937

Italy - Vietnam

Italy

28/4 -

The 60 hectare Cinecitta Studio opens 15 months after Benito Mussolini laid the first stone in January 1936. [ADD]

Kenya

– The Bantu Educational Cinema Experiment is dissolved.   Notcutt and his colleagues recommend that the British Colonial Office establish local film units in the colonies, co-ordinated by a central organisation in London. [ADD]

Macedonia

7/3 -

The Urania cinema is opened in Skopje. [ADD]

– Blagoja Pop-Stefanija makes an 8mm film called The Monument  [ADD]

– The National Health School of Zagreb produce Rice Fields in Macedonia and Our Southern Lakes. [ADD]

– The Serbian Farmers union produce a documentary film about the fishermen of the Dojran, Prespa and Ohrid Lakes. [ADD]

Mexico

– Ranchero films, a mixture of rural and folklore tales, become popular, accounting for more than half of the 38 films produced in 1937. [ADD]

Paraguay

– German director James Bauer’s Paraguay, tierra de promisión, Paraguay’s first feature film, is released. [MORE]  

Peru

– Amauto Films is established by Felipe y Washington Varela La Rosa. [ADD]

Poland

– Micha Waszynski’s Der Dibuk is released. [ADD]

Singapore

– Run Run Shaw and Runmie Shaw import film equipment from Shanghai and begin producing films at their small studio at Ampas Road in Singapore.   They manage to make only 5 or 6 films before the Japanese invasion of 1941. [ADD].

Taiwan

– The Taiwanese film industry is virtually decimated by the Sino-Japanese war. [ADD]

Thailand

– Thai film companies produce musicals to capitalise on the advent of sound, and start selling records of film soundtracks.   The Sri Krung Sound Film Company release an album of their film Wiwa Tieng Kean (Midnight Wedding) [ADD]

USSR

25/4 -

After two years, Sergei Eisenstein is forced to stop filming of Bezhin Lug (Belzhin Meadow) by the Soviet authorities, to make a public admission of his ‘errors’, and to disown the film.  [ADD]

7/11 -

Mikhail Romm’s Lenin y oktyabre, one of the first Russian films to depict Lenin, is released. [ADD]

Uzbekistan

– The Oath, Uzbekistan’s first sound film, is released. [ADD]

Vietnam

– Two sound films are made this year – although they are both shot in Hong Kong by a Cantonese director.   Neither Canh dong ma (in which writer Nguyen Tuan has a small role) or Tran phong ba are successful. [ADD]

– The Asia Film Group studio in Hanoi produces Tron voi tinh. [ADD]

Other Key Films of 1937

Italy

Scipione L’Africano (Carmine Gallone) [ADD]

Philippines

Gamugamong Naging Lawin (Winged Ant that Turned into a Hawk) [ADD]

Sampaguitang Walang Bango (Jasmine Without Fragrance) [ADD]

Poland

Ludzie Wisly (People of the Vistula) (Aleksander Ford) [ADD]

USSR

Deputat Baltiki (Iosip Heifetz, Alexander Zarkhi) [ADD]

Vozvrashcheniye Maksima (Return of Maxim) (Grigori Kozintsev, Leonid Trauberg) [ADD]

Trinadtsat (The Thirteen) (Mikhail Romm) [ADD]

Uzbekistan

Tashkent Textile Factory (M. Kayumov) [ADD]

The History of Cinema: 1937