Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo China released on DVD on March 5th

‘Pioneering three-part documentary on China’ – New York Times

Mr Bongo Films is delighted to announce the release of one of the rare ‘holy grails’ of world cinema – Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo China – a fascinating documentary of china in the early 1970s. It will be released on DVD on 5 March 2012.

Chung Kuo China presents unforgettable glimpses of one of the world’s richest cultures, it visits familiar sights such as the Great Wall of China and The Forbidden City, but its main focus remains towards the people themselves. Across China Antonioni picks up snippets of life from major cities like Peking and Shanghai including scenes of children at an elementary school; a hospital where a woman is having a cesarean birth; and a cotton mill and its workers. People struggle amidst poverty and hardship to sustain the collective revolutionary spirit that liberated them.

Despite receiving the direct support of the Chinese Communist Party during production, Chung Kuo provoked a strong backlash on its initial release, earning rebuke from Mao Zedong himself. While well received in the West, the film did not find its intended audience until its 2004 screening at the Beijing Cinema Institute.

One of Antonioni’s most innovative works, formerly languishing as a prized object in cinema archives, this film’s vision achieves greater resonance in the 21st Century than the time of its release.

Chung Kuo China is an indelible time capsule of the aftermath of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the defining event of Modern China.