Reeling in the years

By Zhao Xu (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-08-17 18:23

While the journey made Cohen's reputation as the first American journalist to film in China since 1949, it was not without consequences. Having failed to take his passport at the airport when Cohen returned to the US in December 1957, the US State Department refused to renew the passport when it expired the following year.

"There was even one married couple in our group who, after we'd left China, contacted the US Un-American Activities Committee and said they were prepared to testify against the 'pro-Communists' in the group," Cohen says.

But he was not deterred. From 1958 to 1965, Cohen gave several hundred film lectures throughout the US and Canada.

"The decision to challenge the dominant view of the Cold War era has led me to a half-century long career of producing films and books which deal with many of the problems afflicting our world, ranging from prejudice to discrimination and fear-mongering," says Cohen, who is today among America's most respected documentary filmmakers.

And China remains one of the most compelling subjects. In 1978, shortly after the "cultural revolution" ended, Cohen returned to film what he describes as "a nation that was just crawling into the sunlight after surviving a terrible, long winter".

He returned again in 1988, when he saw himself as "some sort of futuristic time-traveler who popped in to see how things have changed every decade or two".

Back in 1957, Cohen, who was given 11 30.5-m rolls of film - the equivalent of 45 minutes total - for covering the six-week journey, saved the last two for the Oct 1 celebration. Standing in front of Tian'anmen among 10,000 dignitaries and foreign guests, he captured the colorful parade in which children waved pastel paper flowers and thousands of doves were released into the cloudless sky.

"By night the streets of the Chinese capital are aglow," Cohen says in his film narration. "The city echoes to the thunderous roar of exploding sky rockets - the glowing reds, greens, golds and blues silhouettes the skyline and the ancient Forbidden City."

Today, Cohen still relishes his role of bringing China to the Western world.

"I've been lucky enough to witness the building of a mighty nation and the striving of a quarter of the human race for a better world," he says.

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