In a Film Project, New Visions of Chinatown

Despite the beautiful blues, yellows, reds, and greens that mark the low-rise buildings in the heart of Chinatown, many New Yorkers never notice its splendor. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the neighborhood’s economy has declined, and mainstream revitalization efforts have largely omitted this historic district. But with so much attention on China lately, it’s no wonder this neighborhood is finally getting its 15 minutes.Inspired by the grassroots spirit of the Tribeca Film Festival, an independent curator working with the Museum of Chinese in America, Karin Chien, recently devised the Chinatown Film Project, a three-part, multi-format, multinational film exhibition portraying Chinatown as much more than a place to find great dim sum or bootleg Prada bags.The series is tentatively slated to begin in January, when the Museum of Chinese in America is set to reopen in its new space, which has been designed by Maya Lin. For Part 1 of the exhibit, 10 diverse New York City-based filmmakers have been commissioned to make short films based on their visions of Chinatown. For Part 2, which will be exhibited at the Museum on Apple laptops alongside Part 1 (though some online films have already been completed and can be viewed now at youtube.com/user/mocanyc), a “grab a camera and shoot something” motto has been adopted, and anyone with a camera and an Internet connection can post a video about Chinatown. Finally, Part 3 will feature 10 international filmmakers as they capture Chinatowns in Barcelona, Paris, São Paolo, Havana, Johannesburg, and other cities.Most of the New York-based filmmakers had little experience in Chinatown, but after working there, they said they were seduced by its history, cultural diversity, and beauty.Jem Cohen has lived in Brooklyn for 25 years but had never taken a camera into Chinatown before last year. Mr. Cohen filmed his piece at night on the neighborhood’s streets, creating a dreamy, impressionistic vignette with a collage of sounds filling the score. In the darkness, he said, oft-ignored details, such as the movement of a fish in a tank or a portrait of a cat in a liquor store, can take on a quiet dignity.“Chinatown is the only place in New York that feels like New York,” Mr. Cohen said. “Since most of New York is starting to resemble Miami or New Jersey or Houston, it makes you really value those nooks and crannies.”Indeed, he said, the development of new condominiums and chain businesses in the neighborhood has served to conceal not only historic architecture but a sense of community, where mah-jongg parlors and food markets line the winding streets.For his role in the forthcoming festival, the Chinese-American filmmaker Wayne Wang, who helmed 1993’s “The Joy Luck Club” and this summer’s “A Thousand Years of Good Prayers,” collaborated with Rich Wong to craft a visual tribute to Chinatown’s working people.“You mostly never see people working in Chinatown,” Mr. Wang said. “You eat, get things done, taking [people’s labor] for granted.”For his part, the Harlem-bred editor Sam Pollard, a frequent collaborator of Spike Lee, chose to tell a generation’s worth of history in Chinatown using the first-person recollections of three lifelong residents. They took him on a tour around the neighborhood, pointing out where they were born, where they played baseball, drank tea, and got “lumps in the face” from fights with Italians in neighboring Little Italy.Other films slated to appear at the Chinatown Film Project include Mr. Wong’s musical about a young woman strolling through Chinatown; Miguel Arteta’s mockumentary featuring a passerby flirting with the camera on a Chinatown sidewalk; So Yong Kim and Bradley Rust Gray’s story of an accidental meeting between two neighborhood teenagers, and Jonas Mekas’s historical peek at pre-existing videos of Chinatown culled from footage banks and archives.Most of the films that will screen in Part 1 of the series have been completed, though some filmmakers have yet to finish their projects. Come January, the films will be projected on a large screen in looped screenings lasting approximately one hour at the rejuvenated Museum of Chinese in America. Once parts 1 and 2 have been exhibited, work on Part 3 will begin, tying the narratives of New York’s Chinatown to those of Chinatowns around the world and knitting together a global narrative of vibrant communities that are integral to cities in America and around the world.

In a Film Project, New Visions of Chinatown

In a Film Project, New Visions of Chinatown

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