Author: Navroze Contractor
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 257
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143029339
Description
Part travelogue, part cultural study, part film history, this book provides an insightful and charming chronicle of daily life inching in the mid-1980s.
In 1985 Navroze Contractor, an award-winning Indian cinematographer, joins an international crew to make a groundbreaking film in china. Their focus: the dreams and aspirations of the country’s young people. Given unprecedented access to the people and the country, the team sets about its work amidst the challenges this developing nation poses to a group of artists.
As he embarks on the three-month-long expedition in what is to him a strange new land. Contractor is warned by a colleague: Be careful, China will eat you up. The advice is prescient as Contractor, an ardent fan of Chinese history for more than two decades, experiences the everyday reality of Red China. Now he experiences everything from dealing with the infamous Chinese bureaucracy to eating snakes.