Agnes Smedley: Our American Friend (1993)
War-torn China: from the front lines
to the inner sanctums, she was there.
The year is 1937. Reporting from
guerrilla headquarters, journalist Agnes
Smedley is granted an interview with
the Red Army’s charismatic leader in
exchange for teaching folkclances to the
troops. As General Chu Teh recalls the
hardships of his peasant past, Agnes is
flooded with memories of her own -
and finds with Chu a kinship of the
heart and mind she’d traveled the globe
to discover. Drawing on Eastern and
Western traditions in music and
theatre, the stories of Agnes and Chu
unfold in intertwining vignettes that
weave in and out of time.