Song of the Fishermen - 1934

Country: China
Language: Mandarin
Also known as: Yu guang qu
Director: Chusheng Cai
Writer: Chusheng Cai
Stars: Langen Han, Peng Luo and Kwah-Wu Shang
The first social-realist film in the history of Chinese cinema. Won the first international prize for a Chinese film at the 1935 Moscow Film Festival.
The story is about a fisherman's family living near to Shanghai. In the beginning, twin babies are born, a boy and a girl. Their growing-up is briefly sketched, and their friendship with "young master", a boy from rich family about their age. While the fishing business goes from bad to worse, he travels abroad to study ship-building, and later returns to have a rather large, modern trawler built. This of course reduces the chances of the traditional fishermen even more, so the boy and the girl go to Shanghai looking for a job. These scenes are really intensive - the queues forming outside the personnel office (men and women separate), the attempts to get a better place in the queue, the final disappointment when all vacancies are filled.

Queen of Sports - 1934

Country: China
Language: Mandarin
Director: Yu Sun
Writer: Yu Sun
Stars: Lu Bai, Langen Han and Feiguang He
Young sprinter Lin Ying enrolls in a sports college in Shanghai. As she becomes a sports celebrity, she starts to mangle with the upper class and has gradually forgotten the true essence of sports.
The director is the legendary Sun Yu, and the film stars Li Lili and Bai Lu. Li Lili is in her element here as Lin Ying, a young woman with energy to burn who has come to Shanghai to study at a sports school. As a child, she was fond of climbing trees and running around, and has great natural talent. The focus of the film is clearly on sport, including physical training, study and competition, though while at the school, she becomes rather fond of her coach, the brother of a classmate whom she knew in her childhood, as well as earning the jealousy of some catty classmates.
The film advocates sport and physical health as important for the whole nation, and there is also implicit criticism of the effete manners of the upper-classes in the city. There are also moments of humor that lighten several scenes, including a Laurel-and-Hardy duo of grounds-men. An interesting and entertaining example of an early sports film.

Poor Daddy - 1929

Director: Yang Xiaozhong
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Language: Traditional Chinese & English
A 1929 B&W silent comedy from Shanghai, describing a vindictive funnyman's efforts to get back at his cheating wife, as aided by his smarter and more moralistic young son. B&W, Silent, with original Chinese and English intertitles.

Goketsu Jiraiya - 1921

Country: Japan
Language: Japanese (intertitles)
Release Date: 1 February 1921 (Japan)
Director: Shôzô Makino
Stars: Matsunosuke Onoe, Suminojo Ichikawa and Kijaku Otani
Also Known As: Jiraiya the Hero

Little Toys - 1933

A brief scene from the rare Chinese silent Little Toys (1933), starring the beautiful Ruan Ling-yu, the "Chinese Garbo", one of China's leading actresses who committed suicide at age 24.
In the film Ruan plays a toymaker who supports her family and community with her craft of toymaking. War and strife and loss becomes her lot in life but the courageous character of "Sister Ye" carries on no matter what befalls her.

I Graduated, But ... (1929, Japan)

Only a few minutes survive of this essentially lost silent film of famed Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu called I Graduated, But ... From 1929. Consider this video like watching a longer than usual trailer for the film. :)
It's about a recent college graduate who can't find a job because he considers an entry level office job beneath him. This forces the wife to have to work to support them, which makes the husband jealous and angry. Finally he is humbled and goes back to the same business to ask for work again, he is hired, and the marriage is restored.
It's funny to see in the couple's apartment a poster for Harold Lloyd's Speedy, an American silent film that came out the year before! It shows you that the Japanese were well aware of American films, and admired them.