Chung Kuo: China

Michelangelo Antonioni's documentary, shot in China in 1972, which drew one of the harshest political responses in the history of cinema. The starting point was this: Italian state television and the Chinese side wanted a leftist director to go to China and tell the story of the revolution. Antonioni was invited and filmed in the country while the Cultural Revolution was still going on. What emerged was not the expected film. Instead of mass ceremonies and pictures of achievement, Antonioni filmed ordinary people: markets, worn clothing, narrow streets, old men drinking tea, a birth, a school yard. A three-and-a-half-hour travelogue in three sections. The Chinese leadership declared it anti-propaganda. Antonioni was called an enemy of the revolution, the film was banned in the country, and the leadership ran an international campaign to discredit both it and its maker. The ban lasted more than thirty years. The film was first shown in China in 2004, to eight hundred people at the Beijing Film Academy. An important document for anyone interested in documentary cinema, political history, and how looking itself can be treated as a crime. A warning about length is in order: it runs three and a half hours and has no narrative, only observation.