A longtime friend of mine shared with me an article about Michelangelo Antonioni, an Italian filmmaker who made a documentary film called China in 1972. The film was realistically shot without any obvious personal bias, nor any cave-in or compromise to either west or east. It is now an excellent, rare-of-a-kind record of life at that historic moment of China. The true Antonioni fashion also feasts the viewers’ eyes with rich landscapes in various parts of China before China headed for full-blown modernization drives. The film was subsequently severely denounced in an 18-page article called “A Vicious Motive-Despicable Tricks-A Criticism of Antonioni’s China Film ‘China’” published by an official publisher Foreign Language Press in Beijing in 1974.

I would think the film was condemned because it ran against the policy at that time, that is, media should work as a propaganda for lauding China to outsiders. Anything negative should not go public.

I hope my children will remember this — Truth is like the rock buried in the midst of a roaring sea. When surrounding water subsides, the rock is revealed, standing the test of time and tide. So is it for Antonioni’s China, so be it for any truth.