he seems to follow an official itinerary, but shoot most of the movie in the streets instead. and that of course must have pissed off mao and his wife.
I found an excerpt of Sonntag's book "on photography" that is dealing particularly with the reasons that caused the Chines to criticize the movie. If I unerstand correctly, she says, that it is mostly because the Chinese at that time were at the beginning of developing a camera culture and at that time it was more usual to take pictures with a rather artificial than natural composition an were the object was also able to "control". So probably it were cultural differences in perception that led to it's ban. I would never guessed that.
that's very interesting and i'm sure true in part, but when you see the movie you will know why they couldn't have liked it. it's quite critical even on the surface, showing widespread poverty for one thing, and then things like illegal markets. i don't know how he could have been allowed to shoot that sort of material and get it out of the country. it's quite unimaginable that such a movie would be shot in the USSR at the time. they would have checked his footage at least before letting him out! it seems like Chinese had slacker ideological control, in a way. out of being uninformed, probably, but still.
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