know Me.

Chinatown Shorts Film & Fashion program at The Great Star Theater is a FREE but TICKETED EVENT (SOLD OUT).

For those with no internet / online access: Walk-in tickets WILL BE AVAILABLE (with no prior online registration). However, please arrive early and let the Greeters know that you do not have a ticket but would like a seat; we will do our best to accommodate based on theater capacity.

Launched in Fall 2020, Chinatown Shorts: You Are Here is a short form film series highlighting the human pillars from SanFrancisco’s historic neighborhood and beyond. Each film portrait is a specific entry point into historic Chinatown through the lens of a community member and their inspiring contributions that have shaped their neighborhood and city.

Spring/summer 2022 installment of shorts opens with Dorothy Quock 郭 周 金 杏 and Victor Tung, followed by a live fashion show of their dynamic designs, inviting community members to be the models. The series is created by James Q. Chan 陳偉權, presented by CAAM, with a directing debut from Corey Tong and Penelope Wong.

CURIOSITY MAN: The World of Victor Tung (2022) * sneak preview *
Dir. Corey Tong, Penelope Wong
With an emerging international following, Chinatown’s colorful artist and preeminent couture designer infuses a lifetime of memories into his creations: paintings, photographs, sculptures, and one-of-a-kind wearable pieces of art – inspiring endless creativity for all who experience his dynamic work.

Becoming Polka Dot (2022) * sneak preview *
Dir. James Q. Chan 陳偉權
No longer just clothing, Dorothy Quock’s 郭 周 金 杏 hand-made wardrobe are her personal artifacts that embody the singular and extraordinary life of this 88-year-old colorful fashionista, social justice activist, and community treasure.

James Q. Chan 陳偉權 is an Emmy-nominated producer and director based in San Francisco. Recent producing credits include Plague at the Golden Gate (American Experience, 2022) and Chinatown Rising (America ReFramed, 2022). Recent directing projects include Bloodline (screening now on KQED’s Truly CA), large-format 360° films for Disney, and launching the doc web series Chinatown Shorts. His film Forever, Chinatown (Emmy® Nominee) received multiple festival awards and screened globally with American Film Showcase, where James also serves as a filmmaker envoy. James received a Certificate of Honor from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for his work highlighting stories from the AAPI community. The sensibilities throughout his projects are shaped by his refugee and working-class background, love for nature shows, and memories of his mother’s cooking. He is currently adapting Laurence Yep’s acclaimed book Child of the Owl into a magical realism series for television. Prior to filmmaking, James worked as a SAG/AFTRA talent agent in San Francisco. James is a member of both New Day Films, a filmmaker-run distribution co-operative, and the Directors Guild of America.

Based in San Francisco and Hawai’i, Corey Tong is an Emmy-nominated film producer, director, writer and creative consultant for festivals, exhibitions, curatorial programming, and public relations. Such work includes presenting film programs in the U.S. and Asia. Notably, Tong is a producer of the Emmy-nominated Forever, Chinatown (USA, 2016), executive producer of the Oscar®-nominated, Emmy-winning Last Day of Freedom (USA, 2015) and producer of the feature drama The Land Has Eyes (Fiji-USA, 2005). He has been a consulting producer on documentary Defender (2017), Point of No Return (2018) and numerous other film projects. Tong serves as an international cultural envoy for the U.S. State Department American Film Showcase global film series. He is the former director of the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (CAAMFest) and IFFCON (special projects) respectively.

Penelope Wong has always been a storyteller. At age ten, she transformed Alcott’s Little Women into a Chinese-American tale. Today, her filmmaking aims to tell stories beyond stereotypes. Recent credits include executive producer of the anti-gun violence music video Too Many Bodies, Jeannette about a survivor of the Pulse Nightclub shooting, and Found about a Korean-American adoptee. She was associate producer of Academy Award-nominated Last Day of Freedom and Emmy-nominated Forever, Chinatown. Wong is the screenwriter of award-winning The Shanghai Café and Buddha Baby Cha Cha Cha. She is currently developing a narrative short about the night her mother met The Other Wife of her father. Previously, Wong enjoyed a career in advertising and branding where she co-founded Wong Wong Boyack and served as Senior Vice President and Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather Direct. An author on everything from fitness to fashion, food to film, and problem-solving to cultural diversity, she contributed a chapter to Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island. Wong has lectured at UC Berkeley Extension, University of Hawaii, and Stanford’s Publishing Course for 15 years. She serves on the board of SFFILM, Oakland Museum of California, and California Humanities. Wong lives in San Francisco and Santa Barbara.

Heesoo Kwon's Ovulation captures the moment of rebirth of her female ancestors and herself into Leymusoom digital bodies following the metamorphosis process from her past work, Leymusoom Mogyogtang (video, 2019). In this endlessly looping video, we conduct the ritual to be reborn as queer bodies without the burden of previous lives and patriarchy. Fernanda D'Agostino collaborates with Heesoo Kwon in designing a spatialization projection of the video. Presented by Chinese Culture Center.

Religious practices, family rituals, misogyny and patriarchy serve as guideposts that inform Heesoo Kwon’s aesthetic interest in reimagining religion and time as feminist sites that hold the possibility to frame alternate forms of belonging, both for the self and others. In 2017 the artist initiated an autobiographical feminist religion, Leymusoom, and to this date, over 150 people have converted. The term Leymusoom refers to not only the religious community as a whole, but also to its active practitioners and their pursuit of self-autonomy and feminism as informed by individual history. Participation in Leymusoom means converting from patriarchy to feminism, and creating personal/communal feminist rituals. As the initiator, Kwon leads communal activities and expands her personal feminist utopia in the digital realm. Through Leymusoom, she is able to abstract/reimagine/queer conceptions of time, boundaries of appropriate love, sacrifice, trauma, violence, and familial relations.

Brian Singer was raised in the Bay Area by a white father and a Japanese mother who, in her childhood, was incarcerated with her family in the internment camps during WWII. On his birth certificate (1973, Virginia), under color or race of father it says “White,” for his mother, it says “Yellow.” Growing up with mixed ancestry, Singer never really knew which culture he belonged to. Also, “Yellow”? Really?

With this site specific piece, Singer explores the notion of duality and identity on the sidewalks of Chinatown. A neighborhood with a rich history and steeped in tradition, it also serves as a destination for tourists from around the world. The words “WHITE” and “YELLOW” adorn sidewalk squares, reversed as one would see them while looking in a mirror. The colors are also transposed, adding to the complexity for those of mixed descent who struggle with the feeling of belonging, and being neither here, nor there.

Brian Singer, also known as Someguy, is a San Francisco based fine artist whose studio practice and large-scale public projects address a variety of social justice issues. With a meticulous rigor and legibility informed by his experience as a graphic designer and visual communicator, Singer’s work invites critical engagement through surprising juxtapositions of media and wordplay. Ranging from intimate works on paper to international participatory projects, Singer’s practice is unified by the desire to facilitate unexpected moments of human connection. Recent public projects include an 84 foot mural at Salesforce Transit Center comprised of almost 2,000 individual stencils (each with at least one match) reading, “You Are Not Alone;” as well as a text-based installation commissioned by the Bernal-Mission Merchants Association reading, “There’s no place like,” on a 50 foot chain-link fence surrounding a fire damaged lot. Singer is best known for his “1000 Journals Project,” a participatory global art exchange that has been archived in a book, and feature length documentary, exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles and covered by The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Entertainment Weekly, Better Homes and Gardens among others.