Film Pick of the Week: Wham! 10 Days in China - review by Yvette Huddleston

The film’s history is a complex one. The footage was originally shot when George Michael and Andrew Ridgely, at the height of Wham!’s popularity in the UK but yet to conquer America, travelled to China in 1985 to perform two concerts, one in Beijing and the other in Guangzhou. The trip had been negotiated and organised by their manager Simon Napier-Bell who knew that the surrounding publicity – they would be the first western band to perform in mainland China – would pretty much guarantee Wham! an opening into the United States.

So, off the boys went, with a large press pack in attendance and a film crew in tow. The fly-on-the-wall documentary idea had been proposed by producer Martin Lewis, who had also managed to secure acclaimed veteran filmmaker Lindsay Anderson to direct. Initially approved by Wham! and their management, it proved to be a tricky relationship, as Anderson’s vision for the film, with more focus on the culture-clash nature of the visit than the music did not gel well with the overall purpose of the trip. Anderson, increasingly frustrated by the limitations of his brief, was eventually let go.

A short, anodyne version of the film, very much a PR exercise, was released a year later and quickly forgotten about. Until now, with the footage re-edited, much of it never seen before, and with the addition of new talking heads interviews with some of those involved, including Ridgley, backing singers Shirlie Holliman and Helen ‘Pepsi’ De Macque, Lewis and Napier-Bell. We also hear from Chinese contributors who were teenagers at the time, for whom the experience of seeing Wham! was transformative. It makes for fascinating viewing.

What is most striking is the fact that these two very young men – both only 22 at the time – were, in effect, taking on a hugely important diplomatic role. Alongside electrifying concert footage, we see them giving speeches, written by themselves, at official dinners and receptions. It concludes on a reflective note with Ridgely back in China, standing at the Great Wall, thinking of his old friend Yog, as he affectionately refers to George Michael, and what he would have thought about the positive impact the visit had on so many young Chinese people, a beautiful example of the power of music to change lives. “He would have been profoundly moved.”