Dimanche à Pekin - 1956 - Chris Marker

In describing Peking/Beijing, Chris Marker understands that, no matter how sincere his intentions may be he will never be more than an outside observer to this or any other culture he visits. Rather than ignore or disguise this problem, he runs with it. Literal performances and cultural displays are made the dominant subject of Dimanche á Pekin’s (Sunday in Peking) assembled footage. Gymnasts, dancers, shadow puppets, acrobats all feature to such a degree that, if the film was the viewer’s first exposure to Chinese culture, they could begin to imagine a kind of circus-nation, one in which performance was as common a means of communication as writing or speaking. The narrator’s first introduction to a street performance seduces us into a cultural misunderstanding; “in a park the Pekinese of today is doing his daily exercise” as a man practices complex sword movements as “the traditional sword takes the place of western dumbbells…”. Seduction completed, the camera pans across to show a captive audience, joinin