Tracce di un’enciclopedia politica: l’intervista mai realizzata di Roberto Rossellini a Mao Tse Tung

Among the many unfinished works by Roberto Rossellini - including, to name just a few, a television series on the Civilization of the Conquistadors, a project on the American Revolution, and a film adaptation of Geography of Hunger by Josué de Castro - there is evidence of an interview the director intended to conduct with Mao Tse Tung in China toward the end of 1971. This is the same year Rossellini travelled to Chile to film his interview with President Salvador Allende, marking the beginning of what Adriano Aprà describes as a kind of “political encyclopedia,” revisiting a concept that was so central to the director in the last two decades of his career. The questions Rossellini intended to ask the Chinese leader have not yet been adequately analyzed by critics, primarily due to the limited documentation available on the subject. Thanks to an effort of reorganization and archiving conducted by the undersigned at a private archive, it has been possible to uncover the fourteen - and not twelve - questions that Rossellini intended to ask Mao Tse Tung. Unfortunately, this project remained incomplete, partly due to conflicts with RAI. Riding the wave of renewed Third World movements and ahead of the economic opening of China under Deng Xiaoping, Rossellini, through these questions, reaffirms his desire to depict the reality of a people who, during those years, were at the centre of Western public opinion. This discovery adds an important piece to the extensive project Rossellini began with his experience in India at the end of the 1950s.