Obsessed with Old Movies

Cao’s legendary experiences with films are as fascinating as his collection. A native of Yangzhou City in Jiangsu Province, Cao grew up in Gansu Province, where his father, an armyman, was stationed.

When Cao was a child, he liked reading comics books. He would read them for hours, and not stop even when it was meal time. When he was 11 years old, his father accidentally dropped some of Cao’s comics onto the stove and they immediately burnt to ashes. Cao was heartbroken. He admitted that his affection for movie-related items was more than just a passing interest, but rather an inherent passion that has lasted throughout his entire life.

In 1986, Cao collected a poster of the Chinese comic movie Erzi Kai Dian (Erzi launched a business), marking the starting point of Cao’s collection. Since then he has often visited cinemas around the country and collected various posters of old films.

Cao Guimin and his collections of old movie film strips.

By the end of the 1980s, Cao’s economic conditions improved. He spent RMB 50 on a film copy of Battle on the Black Mountain which was made in 1958. Then he bought a film projector for RMB 1,000 through an installment plan. He learned how to play a movie on the projector and watched the Battle on the Black Mountain again. He had watched it once before when he was little, but he didn’t fully understand the movie then. Some of his friends asked him to help find old films, and would buy copies themselves. After watching them, they were willing to give those old film copies to Cao in support of his collection. That significantly encouraged Cao, who has since devoted himself to looking for, and collecting, old film-related items.

Cao used to work in Nanjing and Shanghai, where he almost “turned the local antique market upside down” looking for every possible “treasure.” In fact, his Krupp-made projector was found by a ragpicker called Xu in Shanghai.

Cao got to know Xu at an antique market on Fuyou Road in Shanghai, and they soon became friends. Cao often advanced sums of money to Xu so that when he found any good items, he could sell them directly to Cao. However, Cao left Shanghai and forgot he had prepaid Xu RMB 400. In 2007, Cao, then in Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, received a call from Xu. “It is good to find you again. I saved an old projector for you,” said Xu. After seeing the photo, Cao decided it was a very old film projector. He asked Xu to freight the machine to Chengdu. He was thrilled at seeing the engraved Chinese characters “The 22nd year of Guangxu’s Reign of the Qing Dynasty”(1896). Later Cao took this old projector to a TV program on China Central Television (CCTV), where experts are invited to evaluate collected treasures. Cao’s projector amazed all the experts, to the extent that they weren’t able to evaluate this oldest projector ever found in China.

Cao believes that film is a cultural product that embodies the wisdom of generations. Films reflect people’s thoughts and spirit and serve as a way for them to explain and express their feelings about truth, goodness and beauty, as well as mendacity, evil and vileness. To make a film projector requires knowledge in areas such as optics, chemistry, mechanics, dynamics and electricity. Cao admitted that his passion for film has never faded and will last forever.