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That Chink at Golden Gulch
One of D.W. Griffith’s shorts before he directed his controversial feature about the Ku Klux Klan, Birth of a Nation (1915), That Chink at Golden Gulch was supposedly a take on racial intolerance (despite the obvious racial epithet in its title). The story focuses on a Chinese laundryman who is rescued from racist taunts by a white man, and by the end of the film he becomes a pushover in service to his white savior. At least one review from the time considered the film a call for understanding, arguing, “Perhaps if everyone could see such heroic self-sacrifice in a Chinaman as this one displayed, the aversion which most men feel toward them would disappear.” ( Moving Picture World , October 22, 1910).
DIRECTOR: D.W. Griffith.
1910. 17 min. USA. B&W. Silent. Digital.
The Curse of Quon Gwon
Marion Wong’s 1917 film, The Curse of Quon Gwon , is the earliest known feature film made by an Asian American, and one of the few American silent features directed by a woman of any ethnic background. Produced in and around Oakland, California, where Wong resided, the film focused on Chinese American characters and their bicultural values. It was never distributed, and only two reels of per- haps seven resurfaced when family members brought them to the attention of this writer in 2004. The Academy Film Archive eventually preserved the surviving nitrate elements, and in 2006, the National Film Registry added the title to their esteemed catalogue.
DIRECTOR: Marion E. Wong.
WRITTEN BY: Marion E. Wong.
CAST: Violet Wong, Harvey Soo Hoo, Marion E. Wong. 1917. 35 min. USA. B&W. Silent. DCP. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.
HOLLYWOOD CHINESE
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