Mark Parascandola - Once Upon a Time in Shanghai — at Politics and Prose at Union Market

A D.C.-based photographer interested in “how movies can shape our beliefs about other cultures and about history,” Parascandola follows his 2017 Once Upon a Time in Almería, which  documented Hollywood’s extensive use of locations in southeastern Spain for films during the 1960s and ‘70s, with a photo-essay on the world’s fastest growing film producer: China. With images of massive sets including a full-size replica of the Forbidden City and a reconstruction of several blocks of Shanghai’s shopping hub as they would have appeared in the 1930s—sites that have themselves become tourist attractions—the book explores China’s increasingly global influence via the soft power of its films.