Lights, camera, interaction

It is late Sunday morning and I am rolling around on my belly pretending to be anime heroine Princess Tutu's cat. I stretch, I scratch, I lap up the attention as my cartoon shadow, wearing whiskers, mimics my actions on the screen in front of me.

Welcome to the animation section of the new Shanghai Film Museum (SFM), where visitors can learn about the city's movie-making past and present in a 15,000-square metre, purpose-built edifice sure to become one of the city's biggest box-office draws.

Under the art direction of German architect Tilman Thürmer, of Coordination Asia, the museum features 3,000 exhibits that, he hopes, "will make local audiences of all ages proud of their city".

Like museums worldwide that increasingly engage the public with interactive installations, the SFM obliges with bells and whistles that entertain and educate in Chinese and English. The exhibits help distinguish it from the glut of museums opening each year in a country seemingly determined to wow not only with size but also culture.

Shanghai, as film buffs know, has had a long-standing celluloid love affair. It was there that the Lumière brothers' flicks made their debut in 1896, just after their world premiere in Paris. Twelve years later, Spaniard Antonio Ramos opened the city's first movie theatre, the 250-seat Hongkew Cinema. During the golden age of Chinese film in the 1930s, the city came to be known as the Hollywood of the East.

The glamour and romance of its movie industry are writ large on each of the four floors of the museum, built on the site of a former film studio in downtown Xujiahui. At the entrance, a giant mobile, with props and replicas attached, rotates overhead while a big screen plays scenes from movies; an oft-filmed rickshaw, dangling from the installation, appears in Crossroads (1937), starring the stylishly spit-curled Bai Yang.