ALWAYS IN FASHION: Shanghai is one of the world's most photogenic cities

Located on the western bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai, the Bund is well known for its visually arresting architecture. The many financial institutions and hotels done in a historical European style along Zhongshan Road speak to Shanghai's own history as an international settlement. But beyond the buildings' stately patina are the stories of countless lives altered, often messily, by this strip of land and the changes it bore witness to. Six of these people's stories are explored in The Bund, a new docudrama by filmmaker Zhou Bing. The 90-minute feature received rave reviews at the Shanghai TV Festival in June and a 47-minute version will be aired internationally on the National Geographic Channel later this year.

The individuals depicted in the film lived between the years of 1843 and 1945, a period that began with the British establishing the city's first foreign concession and ended with the departure of Shanghai's last foreign occupiers, the Japanese.

Zhou's four-act film opens with Ye Chengzhong, a man who makes his living ferrying people across the Huangpu. Various circumstances lead to Ye becoming one of the city's most successful merchants running a hardware business aimed at the many ships entering Shanghai's port. As with the docudrama's five subsequent stories, Zhou mixes historical reenactment with digitally-recreated vistas and archived footage from the era to create a layered picture of life on the Bund.

Ye's story in The Bund's first act is interwoven with that of Sir Robert Hart, a British officer renowned for his success in running China's Imperial Maritime Customs Service, collecting customs duties for the Chinese Government until the early years of the 20th century. According to the film, one third of the Qing (1644-1911) government's revenue was due to Hart's work. Zhou makes sure to include personal details for both Ye and Hart overlooked in the history books, showing scenes from both men's (happy) marriages.

The docudrama's second act heads into darker territory, following famed Shanghai gangster Du Yuesheng and the tragic career and life of singer Zhou Xuan; its third centers on the lives of French banker Rene Fano and Chinese-Japanese film star Li Xianglan. In an interview with ChinAfrica, Zhou Bing explained why these particular historical figures were chosen.

"The six people are very typical, their stories representative. [Each] separately has their own dreams about fortune or love," the director said. During the scripting process, other people like the writer Eileen Chang and British merchant Victor Sassoon were considered. "But, in the end," said Zhou, "to make it a smooth and complete story, those characters did not [make it] into the script."

The Bund's fourth act is shorter than the previous three, basically a coda for the film explaining the final fates of Ye, Hart, Du, Zhou Xuan, Fano and Li. It's dotted with spectacular, current-day images of the Bund covered in mist. This is in marked contrast to the silent, grainy black and white archival footage sewn into the other acts. (One reel in particular may stick with audiences. Shot by a Russian photographer, it shows firing squad deaths that happened in the area between 1920 and 1930.)