Il migliore dei documentari impossibili. Chung Kuo - Cina di Michelangelo Antonioni

China is one of the most ambitious and controversial projects of Antonioni. Filmed in 1972, in full swing of the Cultural Revolution, has had a reception history that is in a sense unique and extraordinary. Initially ignored by critics and public, later on the film was attacked by the Chinese press and governing institutions for the highly negative image it offered of the subcontinent, they even staged a worldwide campaign of condemnation of the director, accused of imperialism and fascism. The film therefore disappeared from the scene for several years, it was no longer programmed by the RAI, in part it was rejected by Antonioni himself. At the same time however during the years quite of few researchers (among whom I recall at least Eco, Sontag, Moravia, Chatman) considered it indicative of the problems inherent in the cultural translation, in the methods of approaching reality and of relation to images, in the ideological approach to representation. Recently however, the broad range of discussion that has evolved enables us to regard that particular experience from an unusual point of view, also underlining the elements of affinity and the processes of dialogue activated, despite disagreement and incomprehension, between the acting parts. The essay aims, in particular, at identifying the principal strategies of relation and conflict between the creative part of the film – that we commonly call ‘auteur’ and that occupies an invisible but invasive role in the narration – and the equally institutionalizing part represented by the Chinese political authorities.