In this home movie from 1946, Shanghai emerges from the wreckage of the Second World War and responds to a deluge. Shot by chemical engineer and semiotician Charles K Bliss, born Karl Kassel Blitz in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the footage compilation captures intimate details of Shanghai city life.

His casual filming style reflects the fashions and bustle of the era: a fusion of Eastern and Western clothing trends, rickshaw street travel and the everyday people who run for cover from the downpour. Bliss' time in China inspired the creation of his universal symbolic language 'Blissymbolics’, which aimed to reduce conflict through shared communication – the sensibility behind Bliss' ideograms is echoed in the sweep of his humanist collage.

A chemical engineer and former chief of patents at Telefunken, Bliss survived the Buchenwald concentration camp with the help of his wife, Claire. Bliss and his wife lived in China from 1940 to 1946, where they were eventually placed in the Hongkew Ghetto after Japan occupied Shanghai. After the war, the two were able to migrate to Australia, where they eventually became citizens. Of the 20 Bliss home movies held by the NFSA, eight document his years in China.

The accompanying music was composed by Hojun Kwon, a student at the Australian National University, as part of a silent home movie scoring project undertaken by the NFSA and the ANU School of Music in 2023.