Li Shanzi

Based on a North Korean agitprop stage play titled Red Propagandist, and set and partially filmed in that country, Li Shanzi involves a female agricultural co-op activist “influencing backwards people to participate in collective work,” as one film encyclopedia dryly notes. (“Thanks to her, the co-op realizes a big harvest.”) Made by a hopeful Zheng to curry political favor with Mao’s circle, the film was instead attacked by censors and never publicly released. A report titled “Criticisms by Leading Film Comrades Concerning Li Shanzi” was published, and even Mao’s wife told Zheng he “was not standing with the proletariat.” He would never work again.