[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ynENhI30jI[/youtube]
Take a Look: New York City Chinatown Post-9/11, by Kevin Lee
New York’s Museum of Chinese in the Americas wants you to share your Chinatown with the world.
The Chinatown Film Project, launched last month, is a worldwide examination of the world’s Chinatowns through film and video. Although the first part of the project will consist of ten commissioned films by New York filmmakers, including well-established Wayne Wang (director of The Joy Luck Club and, uh, Maid in Manhattan) and rising star Rich Wong (Colma: The Musical), the second part is open to contributions from ordinary people across the globe. All you have to do is shoot a short video, no more than seven minutes long, about your city’s Chinatown and upload it to MoCA’s YouTube channel.
At the moment, only four videos have been uploaded. Three deal with New York, one of which is Kevin Lee’s “Take a Look,” about the effect of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centres on nearby Chinatown. The fourth is a documentary short on the Chinatown in Honolulu. If you can get past the hackneyed introduction (“Chinatown appears as a mysterious world filled with sights and sounds”? Come on!) it’s actually quite informative.
It would be cool to see some Montreal content. After all, plenty of captivating stories and fascinating people lurk in the narrow streets of our Chinatown. So why not grab a video camera, head down the Main and see what you come up with?
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The CBC has been running a series on Canadian Chinatowns all week titled “New Business in Old Chinatown”. Every morning on Sounds Like Canada (http://www.cbc.ca/soundslikecanada/features.html?7). Somebody should follow-up with a video camera…