Chung Kuo, Cina

Michelangelo Antonioni — Italy — 1972 — 220’

In 1971, a year before Nixon’s historic visit to China and seemingly a harbinger of a thawing of international relations during the Cultural Revolution, Michelangelo Antonioni was invited by Mao Zedong’s regime to make a work of propaganda about the superior virtues of the Communist nation. Fascinated by a country that remained an enigma to the West, the filmmaker shot nearly 100 hours of film during his travels from Peking to Shanghai by way of the countryside.