How, during the Cultural Revolution, a Chinese ballet film wowed the West after premiering at Venice
- In 1971, during the Cultural Revolution, Beijing sent a Chinese ballet film to the glitzy Venice Film Festival, from where it become a hit with Western audiences
Gina Lollobrigida, one of the big stars of Italian post-war cinema and a Hollywood icon, was the public face of the 1971 Venice International Film Festival.
Surrounded by fans and paparazzi, she was clad in a revealing bead-encrusted gown and matching cloche hat. Looking every inch the movie star, Lollobrigida was caught in conversation with a clearly charmed Chinese man wearing a navy blue Zhongshan suit and looking every inch the dedicated Maoist.
The picture is all the more remarkable when you consider that the 1971 festival was one of the most lavish star-studded gatherings of the international film world in a western European city renowned for its love of money and excess.
Who was he? Why was Gina Lollobrigida entertaining him? How did this photograph even happen at the apex of the chaos and ideological madness of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution back in China?
Well, it turns out that in 1971 – a year that would see both the deadliest factional infighting among the Chinese leadership and the tentative beginning of moves towards rapprochement with the United States – the People’s Republic of China and Italy, after many years of wrangling and rancour, officially established diplomatic relations.
