Swing in Beijing (review)

directed by Shui Bo Wang. VHS video, color, 2000, 73 minutes. Available from First Run/Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn, NY 11201, U.S.A. Web: <http://www.frif.com>.

In the late 1950s, in the wake of the McCarthy Era, a silly joke was going around in which one person says to another, "What do you think of Red China?" and the second person answers, "Oh, I think it's fine, as long as it matches the table cloth." So much has happened in the years since. Some of my oldest, finest friends grew up under Chiang Kai-shek; and yet I have also more recently worked with younger, extraordinary students from the People's Republic of China.

It is impossible not to have mixed feelings about the current state of "Red China"; it is so full of promise, yet overshadowed by the killings at Tiananmen Square—just as the U.S. must never forget the massacre at Wounded Knee, the McCarthy hearings, the Civil Rights Movement and Kent State University. China has a huge, diverse population. Even if it welcomes change, like all nations (including the United States, where it was recently ordered that a benign 19th-century academic sculpture be covered from public view), it must to some extent restrict individual expression.

This film is a wonderful present-day look at the limits of artistic freedom in China: to what degree does China tolerate self-expression? Are political and social issues allowable as artistic subject matter? Is one permitted to create and exhibit experimental art forms? Is artwork censored? And if not explicitly, is it censored implicitly, through denial of funding or exhibition opportunities? Do Western art curators also censor (or direct) Chinese art, in the sense of invariably favoring art that is provocative and offensive, regardless of quality? How can Chinese artists work to save the traditional values of their country? This is an incessantly interesting look at these vital issues, made up of a mixture of interviews with young Chinese artists, filmmakers and musicians (who speak with surprising candor), along with clips from plays and films, art exhibitions and visits to artists' studios. This film is of great value to American university students, not only as a way to learn about "Red China," but, more important, as a way to better understand the acts of their own government.