The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir is a 1975 American documentary film directed by Shirley MacLaine and Claudia Weill. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
The film depicts a group of American women who travel to China during the Cultural Revolution. They see surgery performed under acupuncture anesthesia, and the "glory" of life on Chinese farms and schools under Mao. The film only shows the idealized version of China her government handlers allowed her to see, and was dismissed in the West as propaganda.Chaozhu Ji: "The Man on Mao's Right: From Harvard Yard to Tiananmen Square, My Life Inside China's Foreign Ministry" (2008). Random House. Page 301.
MacLaine later recounted a anecdote from her visit to Deng Xiaoping, who dismissed it as false.John W. Garver, "China's Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People's Republic of China" (2016). Oxford University Press. Page 412: "MacLaine had visited China during the Cultural Revolution era in the early 1970s and had been very impressed by the Maoist efforts to construct a new, model society. At the White House dinner in 1979, MacLaine recalled how, during her visit to China, she had met a university professor growing vegetables in a farm in the countryside. When asked if he felt a loss at having to do physical labor and abandon scientific research at the university, the professor had professed happiness at learning so much from the poor peasants with whom he worked. After listening to the story and pausing for a moment, Deng replied 'That professor was lying.' Deng's Harvard-educated English-language translator Ji Chaozhu, who witnessed this exchange, recalled: 'MacLaine's jaw dropped.'"
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The autobiography "Berkeley to Beijing" discusses the events surrounding the filming from a twelve-year-old girls perspective.