This past week at work, I had the privilege of watching Hollywood Chinese: The Chinese in American Featured Films, a recently released American documentary film directed by Academy Award-nominated director Author Dong. The documentary compiles more then a 100 films dating all the way back to the 1900’s as well as a number of interviews of prominent Chinese Americans to illustrate an historical overview of the portrayal of Chinese in mainstream Hollywood films. The documentary was screened in only a select and limited number of locations around the world and is still yet to find a distributor for a DVD release. One of my supervisors, of whom knows Author Dong personally was given one of a limited number of copies that were distributed by Author Dong himself, so I was extremely grateful to have had the chance to view a copy before it was even released on DVD.
The documentary blew me away capturing every single aspect of the struggle of Asian Americans in Hollywood from stereotypical portrayals, misrepresentation, the lack of diversity in roles given, all the way through to the immense invisibility that in my opinion defines the very ignorance of Hollywood itself in its gross attempt to allure the mainstream audience. It would take me pages and pages to offer my own personal summary of this documentary, but in the absence of time, I think I’d rather illustrate my favorite clip of the movie that I feel captures the very essence and message of the film:
The clip shown at the very end is of the Q&A session with the cast and director of Better Luck Tomorrow at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It was the very last question of the day. A white member of the audience stands up and fiercely criticizes Justin Lin, the Asian American director of the film for making a movie so “empty and amoral for Asian Americans”. The question sparked a huge debate amongst the audience, but then, out of nowhere, rises Robert Ebert, the renowned film critic, of whom due to his fame captures the absolute attention of the crowd and responds, “Nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, ‘how could you do this to your people?’”. To the applause and cheers of the audience, his last statement encapsulates it all: '
The documentary blew me away capturing every single aspect of the struggle of Asian Americans in Hollywood from stereotypical portrayals, misrepresentation, the lack of diversity in roles given, all the way through to the immense invisibility that in my opinion defines the very ignorance of Hollywood itself in its gross attempt to allure the mainstream audience. It would take me pages and pages to offer my own personal summary of this documentary, but in the absence of time, I think I’d rather illustrate my favorite clip of the movie that I feel captures the very essence and message of the film:
The clip shown at the very end is of the Q&A session with the cast and director of Better Luck Tomorrow at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. It was the very last question of the day. A white member of the audience stands up and fiercely criticizes Justin Lin, the Asian American director of the film for making a movie so “empty and amoral for Asian Americans”. The question sparked a huge debate amongst the audience, but then, out of nowhere, rises Robert Ebert, the renowned film critic, of whom due to his fame captures the absolute attention of the crowd and responds, “Nobody would say to a bunch of white filmmakers, ‘how could you do this to your people?’”. To the applause and cheers of the audience, his last statement encapsulates it all: '
“This film has the right to be about these people, and Asian American characters have the right to be whoever the hell they want to be.”
I roger that!
3 comments:
wow i'm so jealous!! do you know if there's any way i can watch this film?
LEAP film screening!
tight post! hahaha but you know what's funny? you spelled Arthur Dong "Author Dong." but with your accent, that is TOTALLY how you would have said it!
ahaha
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