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| Antonioni in Tiananmen Square during the making of Chung Kuo in 1972 |
What a great story!
I arrived in China shortly after this Antonioni film was released and remember the hubbub about it. (It was released only in the west, not China at the time).
Now some smart young Chinese filmmakers have gone back to find the subjects of his original doco and found out how they're doing today. Great concept.
Apparently they still remember Antonioni vividly and warmly.
Antonioni was devastated by the negative reaction to his film. Though TBF it was the people against it, but the Beijing government, then in the grip of the Gang of Four's leftist lunacy, the time being the fag end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The new doco is Seeking Chung Kuo.
Looking forward to it!
In 1972, Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni toured China at the invitation of then premier Zhou Enlai and made a documentary about the lives of ordinary Chinese during the Cultural Revolution. The film – Chung Kuo, Cina – sparked one of the biggest, and least warranted scandals in cinematic history, something which plunged its director into despair.
Conceived by Italian public broadcaster RAI and the Chinese embassy in Rome, the idea behind the film was to have a leftist filmmaker visit China and make a film singing the praises of the communist revolution. However, Antonioni shot a film that was worlds away from propaganda – a 217 minutetravelogue showing ordinary Chinese in tattered clothing amid nondescript architecture.
