While cinema was born in France, Duanju was born in China
- Apr 9
- 2 min read
In the south of France, in La Ciotat, the Eden Theatre , built in 1889, remains a unique place. Recognized as one of the birthplaces of cinema, it preserves the memory of the first moving images and the beginnings of audiovisual storytelling.
It was here that the Lumière brothers, pioneers of cinema, filmed and screened, at the end of the 19th century, short sequences of a few dozen seconds that captured moments of everyday life. These films, intended to capture reality or to dramatize it, laid the foundations of a visual language and explored the possibilities of visual storytelling. At that time, cinema was, by its very nature, a short format.
From the outset, filmmakers like Georges Méliès sought to go beyond mere filming by introducing visual effects, illusions, and transformed narratives, thus recomposing reality. This logic is extended today by digital technologies and artificial intelligence.
More than a century later, a new short format has emerged internationally: the duanju, developed in China and often referred to as a "microdrama." However, this format cannot be reduced to a simple technical variation; its scope, economic models, and distribution methods define it according to its own logic, directly adapted to contemporary uses, particularly mobile viewing.
The big screen structured its narratives. The telephone now constructs its own.
It is within this dynamic context that the Eden Theatre, still active and in tune with the evolutions of the film world, recently hosted a talk by producer Guillaume Sanjorge. Having been involved in this format since 2023, he defended the idea of a new stage in the history of audiovisual storytelling, at the crossroads of uses and technologies.
This reflection is part of a broader international dynamic, notably through the Global Traffic Conference 2026, organized in Shenzhen on April 23 and 24. The event brings together the main players in these emerging formats and demonstrates their rapid structuring on a global scale.
Tickets for the Shenzhen event: https://baijing.cn/ui6v6
