tweet
shareFrom San Francisco’s Chinatown to China, these beautiful films explore lost histories and the power of memory.
Program includes exclusive Q&A with selected filmmakers.
In this program
VANISHING CHINATOWN
Directed by Emiko Omori
VANISHING CHINATOWN is about captured dreams and life in San Francisco Chinatown, creating family portraits in spite of family separations due to the Chinese Exclusion Act. Granddaughter Corinne Chan Takayama shares memories, as the photographs reveal a rich culture of family, an immigrant community becoming American, and Cantonese opera of the old, “vanishing” Chinatown.
MOTHER TONGUE
Directed by Eris Qian
A second-generation Chinese American woman pieces together the memory of her mother’s last days when her mother had lost English due to Alzheimer’s, while she doesn’t speak Chinese. Lost in language yet without words, she finally connects to her mother’s heritage as well as her own roots.
