Love and Dreams Mao-Style Get Complicated, Documentary Director Rikun Zhu Says
Will Tizard ContributorWhen Chinese indie documentarian Rikun Zhu set about chronicling the struggles of a young Maoist true believer artist, who dreams of a new life in New York, he knew he was taking on a puzzling contradiction, he says.“It interested me a lot,” the filmmaker says, “because he always says he is a communist and loves China and Mao Zedong.”As Zhu’s subject frets and plans, his efforts take him through long nights of lecturing and teasing his girlfriend and eventually to Beijing and beyond, all in the confused fits and starts only a youthful, restless painter in a system that censors unorthodox work could manage.The doc, “No Desire to Hide,” screening in the Opus Bonum main competition at the Ji.hlava International