Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896. The first attempt at filmmaking was Conquering Jun Mountain (1905). The Chinese film industry didn't begin until 1913 when Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan shot the first Chinese movie The Difficult Couple (1913). During the 1920s film technicians from the United States trained Chinese technicians in Shanghai, an early filmmaking center, and American influence continued to be felt there for the next two decades. China's first "talkie" was The Songstress, Red Peony (1931) played by the then "film queen" Butterfly Hu (Hu Die in Chinese) and produced by the Star Studio, Shanghai's largest film production studio.

Before the 1930s, owing to a lack of creativity, films made in China didn't exert a big influence in its history.More...