https://tankie.tube/videos/watch/491f3d43-83f6-4f2c-8a6a-65bd66b14696 'Comment Yukong Déplaça les Montagnes' / 'How Yukong Moved the Mountains' China, 1976, Joris Ivens & Marceline Loridan-Ivens Language Audio: ENG dub, Subs: N/A "Behind the Scenes On July 22nd and 29th and August 1st, Ivens and Loridan discussed their travel experiences with Zhou Enlai.[8] The latter gave the filmmakers a unique opportunity, carte blanche, the freedom to film whatever they wanted, adding that China was a poor country: “The film should not present a rose-coloured image of China, but rather China as it now is’.[9] After the meeting with Zhou Enlai, Ivens and Loridan attended a performance of the ballet The Red Detachment of Women in the company of Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing. Charged with responsibility for culture, Jiang Qing kept the artistic sector firmly under her control, insisting for example that only eight model revolutionary operas were to be permitted.[10] In their turn, Ivens and Loridan screened a number of films from May 1968 for Jiang Qing and Zhou Enlai, filmed in the brisk new cinéma vérité style. Ivens went into considerable detail about new developments in the western cinema – Germany, Italy, France and the US – but was met with an uneasy silence at the end of his account. No one spoke or asked a question. Ivens was only later to learn that the film screening was but one of many moves and countermoves in the struggle for power between Jiang Qing’s ‘ultra left fraction’ and more moderate figures like Zhou Enlai, who were later to reinstate Deng Xiaoping and return him to Beijing. Jiang Qing had surrounded herself with three trustworthy disciples, referred to by Mao as ‘the Gang of Four’, in an effort to take over from the aging helmsman and to continue his ideological legacy.[11] The struggle for power was to continue until 1976, long enough to see the completion of Ivens and Loridan’s Yukong film. "China At First Sight Ivens and Loridan were also kept busy welcoming a number of foreign film crews as they caught their first glimpse of China. Filmmaker Roelof Kiers had already been commissioned by the VPRO (a liberal Dutch broadcasting company) to film for ten days in Guangzhou (Canton), a city with a population of 3 million people. After his return he wrote: ‘Impressive!, fantastic! [...] Vitality, Energy and Purposiveness are everywhere; in the countryside, the city, in schools and factories. The downcast, somewhat grey inhabitants typical of communist Eastern European countries are nowhere to be found in China. The Chinese give the impression of being lively, good-humoured, self-aware and independent. [...] the Chinese are well-nourished and healthy. [...] We were allowed to film as we pleased within the prearranged schema. No one interfered and nothing was forbidden’.[12] Ivens and Loridan returned to Europe with the same fervour. In the latter part of 1971 and the winter of 1972, Ivens travelled through the Netherlands, Belgium and Italy giving talks about China while his partner did the same in France. They organised a survey in cities such as Marseille, Roubaix, Longwy and Thionville.[13] ‘What do you know about China and what would you like to know?’ 200 questions were selected from an extensive list that were to serve as the guiding principle for the new film. People’s knowledge of hitherto closed China turned out to be limited. ‘You might say that the film is intended for people who still think that all the Chinese look alike,’ Ivens declared.[14] "Too Big Having completed their preparations, Ivens and Loridan headed back to Beijing on March 19th 1972. While they had their questionnaire, they were still without a scenario and had no idea how they were going to proceed. Ivens wrote: ‘Marceline and myself are hard at work here trying to grasp a theme as intense, as significant as the Paris Commune, or the October Revolution, or the 80 Year War in the Netherlands. Too big for 1 film, too big for 5 films. Que faire? Quand même: aller à l’assaut du ciel’![15] According to Ivens, Chinese society was ‘almost the opposite of what we have in Europe. The opposite of the audio-visual – the philosophical. Actual shooting begins in a week’. A day later: ‘The plan and concept I am trying to realise with Marceline and a couple of Chinese filmmakers is gigantic. I was perhaps a little too enthusiastic in yesterday’s letter. [...] China is no utopia. So much still has to be sorted out. In addition to the disastrous influence of the Soviet Union’s mired socialism in the 1950s and 1960s – don’t forget that this country followed a feudal system for thousands of years – old traditions, customs, ways of thinking and acting still prevail throughout the country and are not to be eliminated in a single generation’.[16]" -https://www.ivens.nl/ (https://www.ivens.nl/en/163-yukong-on-cannes-classics-2014) Thu, 09 Apr 2026 03:47:15 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://tankie.tube https://tankie.tube/lazy-static/avatars/3ba3ff73-a8b6-49c9-add8-9653ef090c7f.webp https://tankie.tube/videos/watch/491f3d43-83f6-4f2c-8a6a-65bd66b14696 All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://tankie.tube/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.