Antonioni's China Documentary Chung Kuo (1972) Rattles Chinese

cemetery

tombstone

mule lugging stone roller

Chung Kuo ("Middle Kingdom"), Cina is a 1972 Italian documentary directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, during Mao's cultural revolution.  The PRC invited him to come.  They disliked it so much that he was charged with being anti-Chinese and counterrevolutionary.

The film is 220 mins in 3 parts, covering Beijing; Suzhou/Nanjing; and Shanghai.  Antonioni is clear from get go that they were not trying to understand the Chinese.  His commentary is very sparse.  Many of the images are unflattering.  Part 1 has an amazing operation on pregnant woman doing a C-Section only using acupuncture anesthesia at a gynecological hospital in Beijing.  On a visit to the Great Wall, he comments that it is the world's largest cemetery, as the slaves died working on it. In general, China favors cremation, although rural cemetaries arae occasionally seen.  Permission is easy to obtain. 

This film was brought to my attention in Susan Sontag's On Photography (1977), pp. 168 - 170.  Antonioni was reproached for  things that were old-fashioned.  He chose a donkey pulling a stone-roller, etc., instead of showing new tractors.