This 1966/67 documentary “Report from China Part 3”, originally titled “Country of Dawn”, was distributed by Radim Films in the USA and originally produced by a Iwanami Film Productions, of Japan.
The film records many of the events which took place during the Cultural Revolution. Many aspects of Chinese life are covered: the People’s Communes, the industrial cities and their workers, and scenes of the young Red Guards journeying on foot to bring their knowledge to the peasants living in the outlying regions of this vast country.
All the people in this movie are speaking a local dialect of Changchun, which may make it hard to understand (for a standard Mandarin speaker). Part 3 of the film was shot in August 1966 to January 1967 and shows agricultural and industrial footage of Harbin and the Jilin province. The movie ends with the Red Guard marching along a secular pilgrimage road of the Great March.
0:07 Red Guard and peasants ploughing the fields with tractors round the clock in three shifts, with Zetor and “Stalinets” (licensed Caterpillar) tractors
1:16 Lineup of machinery at a tractor repair factory.
1:30 Inside the tractor repair factory, the ubiquitous quotes from Mao are present on its walls too.
2:15 An old-style axle-repair machine, which could be called an “additive manufacturing lathe” today.
2:35 Electrolytic restoration and electroplating of the corroded headlights
2:44 Quotes read “We must carry forward the spirit of one cent (thriftyness)”. Improvised metal-casting and screw-cutting machines.
3:28 Jilin province countryside
4:17 A team of student Red Guards carrying a 16mm movie projector, visiting the remote villages, as a part of the agitprop rural circuit campaign
5:42 The movie projection team setting up an outdoor screen.
5:55 Propaganda movie / newsreel about Chairman Mao and the Red Guards
7:34 Snowy weather, a chicken coop with a slogan: “Long live the Thought of Mao Zedong”7:43 Doctors scrubbing in for an operation, probably a cesarean section, at an operating room improvised inside a rural assembly house. Newspapers and awards can be seen on the walls
9:07 The Red Guard rules for the “intellectuals” and the story of Norman Bethune, Canadian surgeon and member of the Communist Party of Canada, who brought modern medical techniques to China in 1938 and who died in China in 1939.
10:12 Happy villagers bidding the traveling medical team goodbye
10:43 Harbin city. People reading wall newspapers at the outdoors newspapers and periodical stands. Slogans, such as “Long live the PRC”, “Long live the Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, quotes from Mao, and a caricature of an old Qing official falling down, symbolizing the removal of the “Four Olds”
11:33 Trucks crossing the ice road over the Songhua river
11:45 Boatmen’s winter jobs – pulling ice for the iceboxes of the people, as few in China had refrigerators at the time .
12:10 Children skating, sledding, sliding and playing on the ice
15:22 Peasants digging wells by -40C (-40F)
16:13 The previously-visited chemical fertilizer factory under construction. Its delivery has been postponed by 2 months (at Changchun).
17:13-18:42 A lecture on tractor repair for the peasants at the new tractor repair factory (Xingfu commune, Jilin province)
18:43-24:00 Fushun Coal Mine, now Fushun Mining Group
21:10 A graveyard of Chinese laborers who died during the Japanese occupation
24:00-end of the movie Red Guards traveling on foot, all of them wearing identifying armbands and carrying the eponymous banner. They are retracing the steps of Mao’s “Long March”.
This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
