Oct 06 2008
A little-seen ’70s documentary about China resurfaces
In 1972, award-winning master filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, director of the controversial 1960 arthouse sensation L’Avventura, was invited by the Chinese government to visit its motherland for eight weeks and shoot a documentary about the country. The resulting 207-minute-long magnum opus, called Chung Kuo - Cina (a.k.a. China) enraged Communist authorities, who claimed that the movie did nothing except highlight suffering and propagate “anti-Chinese” sentiment by showing showing “barren farmlands, lonely elderlies, tired animals, and broken houses.” A curious reaction, considering that the late Antonioni (he passed away in 2007) was one of the most fervently anti-capitalist filmmakers out there, not only because of his visually/spatially driven narrative techniques (the “story” or notions of “characterization” were often revealed through visual framing or landscapes rather than traditional dialogue or action), but also in terms of his work’s content (as exemplified, for example, in the explosive (literally and figuratively) ending of his 1970 freak-out Zabriskie Point).
Anyway, as a result of the political controversy, Chung Kuo - Cina was banned in China until 2004, and it didn’t enjoy much play in the West either (the doc’s three-hour-plus running time didn’t help, obviously). It basically ended up as lengthy programming on Italian television. But if you live in or near New York, on Saturday, Oct. 11, at 3:00pm (yes, one show-time only), the Asia Society will be screening (in digibeta format, with English subtitles) the film in its entirety, as part of its series entitled “Under Mao’s Red Sun: China’s Cultural Revolution on Film.” Antonioni’s an amazing visual talent, so any opportunity to see one of his movies should be taken advantage of, especially for a rarity like this documentary.
You can look over the whole “Under Mao’s Red Sun” series schedule here, buy tickets online here, or get directions to the Asia Society here.
An unsubtitled five-minute clip from Chung Kuo - Cina can be seen here.
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