Shanghai, China: Outdoor Movies Return to Shanghai, China

A popular Chinese song captures the nostalgia for outdoor cinema culture, describing the square below a family's home that was once a neighborhood cinema, the children who played games under the screen, and the sadness that outdoor movies have disappeared from the city -- “There is no outdoor cinema anymore in the city / I can never see the back of the screen.”

That tradition is being revived in Shanghai. More than 60 parks across the city show free outdoor films -- comedies, dramas, and recent releases -- on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through September. Around 250 films are screened over the season under the Shanghai Greenery Administration Bureau program, now in its fourth year. On a single Friday night in 2008, roughly 5,000 people watched Wong Kar-wai's My Blueberry Nights in Peace Park in Hongkou District.

“It's the first time I watched an outdoor movie,” said Xiao Chen, 30. “I wanted to know what it's like to watch a film in an open space.” For older residents, the experience is a return to childhood. “We had outdoor films in the park when we were young,” said 72-year-old Zhang, who brought low wooden chairs and fans to Huaihai Park as a family tradition decades ago, when admission was 3 fen (less than 1 US cent).