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Film Reviews | Regular Feature Through the Consul's Eye (Amat 1999, First Run/Icarus Films) Director Jorge Amat entices his audience with the opening scene of Through the Consul's Eye (English version, 50 minutes ). He shows acharming image ofChinese artists performing the dragon dance. The dragon's serpentine body undulates and twists as it circles round chasing an enormous pearl on a pole wielded by another dancer. The dance is familiar to all who have witnessed news coverage of lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatowns throughout the world, but this footage is more compelling because, as the documentary rightly informs us, the film was made by Auguste François, French Consul to China at the turn of the century. François was fortunate in obtaining the use ofcameras from the Lumière brothers when the technology was firstbeing developed. In tum, we arefortunate thatFrançois aimed his cameras at the world around him, capturing the earliest moving images in China. Besides catching the viewer's attention , the opening scene also encapsulates key aspects in the treatment of François' images and the film's image of China. That the once black-and-white, silent image is given an old-fashioned , hand-colored look along with music that sounds sufficiently Chinese (or simply, not western) sadly suggests that the film's creators find François' original wanting. The combination of the nostalgic colorizing and music with the familiar and unfhreateningimage ofthedragondancewarns ofan orientalizing tendency. To be fair, Amat and writer Gérard Guicheteau have multiple subjects to juggle. The main narrative concerns the career of the French diplomat Auguste François. After a posting in Indochina in 1886-87, François' official duties brought him to southwest China, in the areas ofpresent-day Guangxi (in 1896), Yunnan (in 1899 and later), and Sichuan provinces. François seems to have been a perceptive judge ofFrench foreign policy, but never reaching the uppermost echelons of power, he could but follow the directives from above. Perhaps because of this humble role, his participation in the Boxer Rebellion is exaggerated ("national hero"), and his significance in China is only vaguely suggested ("the white mandarin"). While much of the film follows his activities before and during the Boxer Rebellion of 1898-1901, the last segment of the film is devoted to the historically significant construction of the railway linking Vietnam to Yunnan Province, and it is as a member of the management team here that François leaves a mark as a diplomat in Asian history. Interestingly, this costly, French-built railway would eventually become one of the primary supply lines for Vietnamese resistance to French occupation. Fortunately, the strength of this film does not rest on the diplomatic career of August François. Instead, it relies on the magnificent collection of François' photographs and films of Tonkin (present-day Vietnam) and of southwest China during the early twentieth century. Diplomatic life was sufficiently leisurely to allow François to photograph and film a wide variety of people and places. Historically, these photos and films are unquestionable in value, andAmat is wise to use those materials as the visual source for the vast majority ofhis film. The power ofthese images comes from François' ability to capture not only the awesome riverine and mountain landscapes of China's rugged west but also the texture of urban and rural life from the fanfare of Manchu officials traveling in their sedan chairs to the humble work of flea-pickers and ear-cleaners. Few, if any, collections of images of early twentieth-century China so effectively portray such a range of social and economic classes. In addition, François turns the camera on himself and his diplomatic household. The film includes memorable self-portraits of François in Manchu dragon robes or posed as Hamlet addressingYorick's skull as well as home movies ofhis pet cheetah and monkey at play. Remarkably, during the narration ofthe Boxer Rebellion, there are also images of European gunboats firing at Chinese targets, which are eerily reminiscent ofthe hazy green infrared footage from the GulfWar andAfghanistan. (It is implied that this footage was recorded by François, but it seems unlikely that...

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