Chung Kuo, Cina (, "Zhongguo, China") is a 1972 Italian television documentary directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Antonioni and his crew were invited to China and filmed for five weeks, beginning in Beijing and travelling southwards. The resulting film was attacked as slanderous by Chinese authorities and the Italian Communist Party.
Release
Chung Kuo was scheduled to be shown on at the Museum of Modern Art on December 26, 1972, as part of a series of films made for RAI, but the film was not ready for public showing. The film was aired on Italian television in three weekly parts in from January 24 to February 7, 1973.
Reception
Chung Kuo was well received in Italy, provoking discussion on "Antonioni's China" as well as screenings and airings in other countries. The film was also well-received when previewed by Chinese diplomats in Italy.
John J. O'Connor, writing in The New York Times, compared Chung Kuo (truncated to two hours for American television) favorably to the NBC-produced special The Forbidden City, commenting that the former "reaches a degree of sophistication that would appear to be beyond the capabilities or experience of most American television".
A year after the initial broadcast, the People's Daily published a scathing editorial titled A Vicious Motive, Despicable Tricks (), denouncing the film and accusing Antonioni of creating "viciously distorted scenes" in order to "slander China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and insult the Chinese people". The editorial was followed by a mass anti-Antonioni campaign, with activities including televised denouncements, written criticisms from around the country, and schoolchildren being taught anti-Antonioni songs. The campaign was later attributed to the Gang of Four. Antonioni was rehabilitated by the People's Daily in 1979. Chung Kuo was screened publicly for the first time in China in 2004 at the Beijing Film Academy.
References
Further reading
Rey Chow, China as documentary: Some basic questions (inspired by Michelangelo Antonioni and Jia Zhangke, European Journal of Cultural Studies, 2014, 17, 16–30, doi:10.1177/1367549413501482 Xin Liu, China’s reception of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, Journal of Italian Cinema & Media Studies, 2014, 2, 1, 23–40, doi:10.1386/jicms.2.1.23 1 Umberto Eco, De Interpretatione, or the Difficulty of Being Marco Polo, Film Quarterly, 1973, 30, 4, 8–12 doi:10.2307/1211577