MCLC: Antonioni in China publication

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Antonioni in China publication
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List members may be interested in this recent publication:

Xiao, Jiwei. "A Traveller's Glance: Antonioni in China." New Left Review
79 (Jan/Feb, 2013).

http://newleftreview.org/II/79/jiwei-xiao-a-traveller-s-glance

Abstract

It is understandable that Michelangelo Antonioni, one of the few Western
directors permitted to film in China during the Cultural Revolution, was
able to catch only a Œquick glance¹ of the country, as he put it in his
1972 documentary, Chung Kuo­Cina; time constraints and the political
situation did not allow him to do otherwise. But what a glance! The film
galvanized thePRC in a mass campaign against the director and touched off
diplomatic incidents across Europe; four decades later, it would again
stir intense but very different responses among Chinese viewers. In
between, Chung Kuo had become that intriguing oxymoron: a well-known
obscure film. The least seen and least studied of Antonioni¹s works in the
West, in China its notoriety was once inversely matched by the number of
its viewers‹it was the film that everybody deplored but almost nobody had
watched.