Director Chris Marker begins by recounting his childhood dream of visiting the city of Peking – a city he was once only able to admire in books. The viewer is taken on a journey through this city, as if experiencing it from the mind and through the eyes of Marker.

Chris Marker leads us on a colorful and kinetic sojourn through a Maoist Peking in the forward-marching throes of modernization. This idealized vision of a nation—seen here in its shining displays of dances, acrobatics and child’s play—is filtered through the ever-curious mind of a roving auteur.