Museum of the City of New York to Host Screening and Discussion – Mobilizing Chinatown: Past and Present on Film

Left to right: Headshots of Shirley Ng, Curtis Chin, Betty Yu, ManSee Kong

When: Wednesday, May 25, 2022, 6:30pm
Price: General Admission $15 | Members $10

Register

Presented by the Museum of the City of New York with Asian CineVision.

This program is part of the Museum’s celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, and accompanies the Museum’s ongoing exhibition Activist New York.  

What do laundry workers in Manhattan’s 1930s Chinatown have to do with the neighborhood’s activists today? Experience stories of repression, mobilization, and resilience in Chinatown, past and present, at this evening of documentary film and discussion. We begin with Betty Yu’s Discovering My Grandfather Through Mao, about Yu’s grandfather’s activist work with laundry workers during the Chinese Exclusion era, followed by ManSee Kong’s Chinatown Tenant Stories: Mrs. Zheng on Delancey, about Chinatown resident Mrs. Zheng’s introduction to community organizing. The screenings conclude with a private preview of Curtis Chin’s unreleased documentary, Dear Corky, about the late photographer Corky Lee, who died of COVID-19. A talkback and audience Q & A with the directors, moderated by reporter Shirley Ng, will follow the films.  

About the Speakers:
Curtis Chin is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker whose voice has been recognized by the National Association for Multicultural Education, the National Association for Ethnic Studies, the American Librarians Association, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, and more. A graduate of the creative program at the University of Michigan, Chin has also received fellowships from ABC/Disney Television, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and served as a Visiting Scholar at New York University. As a community activist, Chin co-founded the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, the premiere non-profit dedicated to promoting Asian American writers. He has also worked as the Director of Outreach for the Democratic National Committee and served on Barack Obama’s Asian American Leadership Committee during his 2008 Presidential Campaign. His memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant is scheduled to be released in 2024. curtisfromdetroit.com

ManSee Kong is a filmmaker and cultural worker born and raised on unceded Lekawe and Munsee Lenape land (Queens/NYC). Her work is anchored in immigrant experiences and inspired by grassroots community organizing efforts. Her films have screened at Museum of Modern Art, Glasgow Women’s Library, film festivals and community spaces, with support from the Jerome Foundation, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Camargo Foundation, Spike Lee Production Award, Puffin Foundation, and Asian Women Giving Circle. In 2015, she co-founded Chinatown Art Brigade (CAB) with Tomie Arai and Betty Yu, a cultural collective that uses art to advance community-led social justice campaigns. CAB has received support from A Blade of Grass, Rubin Foundation, Asian Women Giving Circle, Fourth Arts Block, Culture Push, Laundromat Project, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, among others. ManSee is a Third World Newsreel Production Workshop alum with an MFA in Film from NYU.

Shirley L. Ng is a staff writer for the news blog, Asian American News (AsAmNews) and a community organizer at the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF). She is an advocate for the Asian American community, a passionate supporter of Manhattan Chinatown and a member of several groups and associations. Shirley attended NYC public schools and graduated from Hunter College with a BA in Media Communications and Political Science.  She was born in Manhattan and raised in Chinatown by immigrant parents from Toisan, China.

Betty Yu is a multimedia artist, photographer, filmmaker and activist born and raised in NYC to Chinese immigrant parents. Ms. Yu integrates documentary film, new media platforms, and community-infused approaches into her practice. She is a co-founder of Chinatown Art Brigade. Ms. Yu has been awarded artist residencies and fellowships from the Laundromat Project, A Blade of Grass, KODA Lab, Asian American Arts Alliance, and her work has been presented at the Brooklyn Museum, Queens Museum, NY Historical Society, and Artists Space. She holds a BFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College and a One-Year Certificate from International Center Photography New Media Narratives program. Ms. Yu teaches at Pratt Institute, Hunter College, and The New School and has over 20 years of community, media justice, and labor organizing work. Betty sits on the boards of Third World Newsreel and Working Films and on the advisory board of More Art.

About the Films:
Chinatown Tenant Stories: Mrs. Zheng on Delancey (ManSee Kong, 2015, 6 mins.): Chinatown resident Mrs. Zheng reflects on her introduction to community organizing upon joining a local grassroots group after garment factories in Chinatown closed en masse after 9/11. Mrs. Zheng became a lead tenant organizer with CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities and successfully organized tenants in her own building on Delancey Street in 2005, pushing back against an unscrupulous landlord. Based on oral history conversations with Mrs. Zheng, Chinatown Tenant Stories is a video and talkback series created for use in tenant organizing meetings, and produced as part of the Asian American Oral History Collective in collaboration with Chinatown Tenants Union of CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, with support from Third World Newsreel and LMCC.

Dear Corky (Curtis Chin, 2022, 16 mins.): For over fifty years, Corky Lee photographed New York City’s Chinatown, as well as the Asian American community around the country. With a strong sense of social justice, he captured the biggest activists and celebrities to the everyday heroes. Sadly, after continuing to document the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes, he fell to COVID. Through his words and pictures, this documentary offers a glimpse of the man behind the camera. 

Discovering My Grandfather through Mao (Betty Yu, 2011, 18 mins.) is a short documentary film about Betty Yu’s personal journey as she uncovers her grandfather’s radical history as a labor organizer and co-founder of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance of New York (CHLA), one of the oldest Chinese-American labor organizations in this country. Her grandfather, Sui Woo, a hand laundry worker came together with other workers and recognized the need for an organization that could challenge the racist and anti-Chinese policies in the 1930’s. Today, Chinese Americans and immigrants can learn from this rich history of workers resisting institutional racism and recognizing the importance of community organizing as a powerful tool.

About Asian CineVision:
Asian CineVision (ACV) is a 501(c)(3) media arts nonprofit devoted to the development, exhibition, promotion, and preservation of Asian and Asian American experiences through storytelling. Our mission is to nurture and grow the community of makers and enthusiasts of Asian and Asian American independent film, television, and digital. 

Join AABANY for the 2020 Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF43)

AABANY will be a community partner for two film screenings for the 2020 Asian American International Film Festival this fall. These two film screenings include:

Aswang (Dir. Alyx Ayn Arumpac)

This film is geoblocked to the USA.

Since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016 and announced his campaign to rid the Philippines of drug addicts and dealers, as many as 20,000 Filipinos have been murdered. ASWANG confronts these executions and their devastating aftermath.

Coded Bias (Dir. Shalini Kantayya)

CODED BIAS explores the fallout of MIT Media Lab researcher Joy Buolamwini’s startling discovery that facial recognition does not see dark-skinned faces and women accurately and her push for legislative protection against biased AI.


This year, the festival is entirely online; you can watch from home with an internet connection. Each film or event will have a link to purchase your tickets. After you purchase, you will receive an email with a link to view the film. You may purchase anytime within the dates of our festival (October 1 to October 11, 2020). For more information and FAQs, please visit the “How to Festival” section of their website.

Please click the links above to purchase tickets and learn more about the films. AABANY members will receive a 20% discount code to all festival screenings once they register for the event on the AABANY website.

Click here to register for “Aswang” on the AABANY website.
Click here to register for “Coded Bias” on the AABANY website.

For more information on the AAIFF, please click here.

Court System Mandates Screening of Courthouse Visitors due to COVID-19

Beginning July 6, 2020, the Unified Court System will require all courthouse visitors to participate in questioning and a temperature screening. The changes come as New York begins to re-open and adjust following the COVID-19 pandemic.

A uniformed official will take the temperature of all visitors, including attorneys, witnesses, spectators, prisoners, law enforcement officials, and others, with an infrared thermometer, which requires no physical contact.

Visitors will be asked if in the last 14 days, the visitor has (1) experienced fever, cough, shortness of breath or any other flu-like symptoms; (2) tested positive for COVID-19 or been in close contact with anyone who has tested positive; (3) returned from travel internationally or from states covered by Executive Order 205.1.

If the visitor registers a temperature of 100º or below and answers ‘NO’ to the aforementioned questions, they will be permitted into the courthouse. If a higher temperature is recorded or visitors answer ‘YES’ to any of the questions, the courthouse will request additional information for the visitor and will not be let inside.

For more information or tread the complete memo, please click the image above.

AABANY Goes to the Movies: Gold Open Screening of “Parasite”

Last week, AABANY received an invitation to participate in a gold open screening of the critically acclaimed new Korean film, “Parasite.” After a few quick exchanges of emails, we settled on the Sunday, Oct. 27, 1:30 pm showing taking place at AMC25 in Times Square. A block of tickets was announced on Friday morning, October 25. In less than 10 minutes that entire block was snapped up. Chris Kwok, who was handling the screening for AABANY, asked for more tickets and got them. Ultimately, 60 people showed up on a rainy Sunday to catch the show.

Whether or not you made the screening, here are some interesting facts about “Parasite”:

Parasite explores greed and class discrimination, portraying a newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan. Director Bong Joon-ho, 49, best known for daring arthouse hits including Okja and Snowpiercer, was awarded the top honor at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d’Or, the first time a Korean director has won the award in its 72-year history. It has been incredible to witness our community rallying together for this film across the country; besides completely selling out New York’s opening weekend screenings, the #GoldOpen movement has already helped Parasite garner the following accolades

  • Highest foreign language per-screen average of all time
  • Highest per-screen average of 2019
  • Highest per-screen average since the opening of LA LA LAND in December of 2016
  • Top 18 per-screen average of all time

We thank Gold House, the non-profit collective that organizes #GoldOpen screenings, for inviting AABANY to take part in the effort to generate excitement and buzz for films featuring Asians and Asian Americans. AABANY recently participated in a screening of “The Farewell,” starring Awkwafina, and last year, in the screening of “Crazy Rich Asians.” We hope there are more opportunities in the near future for us to support and celebrate films with, by, and about Asians and Asian Americans. Thanks to Chris Kwok for organizing the “Parasite” screening and for all the AABANY members and friends who came out to see it.

Join AABANY for the 2019 Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF)

AABANY will be co-sponsoring three film screenings with Asian CineVision for the 2019 Asian American International Film Festival this summer. These three film screenings include:

Jeff Adachi, the Sam Francisco Public Defender and filmmaker who passed earlier this year has been a pioneer in the justice system and API cinema. To celebrate his legacy, two of his documentaries will be shown, along with a tribute by Corey Tong and John Woo before the screening.

Seadrift follows the story of what begins as a dispute over fishing territory into an eruption of violence and hostility against Vietnamese refugees along the gulf coast. Seadrift examines a shooting of a white crab fisherman by a Vietnamese refugee, and its aftermath, which continues to reverberate today.

AABANY’s reenactments site also has information on Vietnamese Fishermen v. Ku Klux Klan, which is the trial that ensued from these conflicts in Seadrift, TX.

Shorts: Identities is a series of eight documentary shorts which all tackle the question: “What does it mean to be Asian, to be a part of the Asian Diaspora?” These shorts confirm that there is no singular answer to this question, and cover topics as wide-ranging as Cambodian doughnut shops (Doughnuts for Dollars) to the young Harvard student who started the non-profit, PERIOD org (Period Girl).


The screening for A Tribute to Jeff Adachi will be held at the Museum of Chinese in America, while the Shorts: Identities and Seadrift screenings will be held at Regal Essex, Theater B.

Please click the links to register and learn more about the films. AABANY members will receive a discount code once they register for the event on the AABANY website. 

For more information on the AAIFF, click here

Screening of Lucky Chow with Danielle Chang

Screening of Lucky Chow with Danielle Chang

“Can” Film Screening at Cellar 58 on Tuesday, April 29 by New York Women in Film & Television

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Please join us for this special screening of “Can” (amongourkin.org) on Tue. April 29 sponsored by New York Women in Film and Television (nywift.org), followed by a Q&A with the producer/director Pearl J. Park and a networking get together at a local restaurant Cellar 58, 58 Second Avenue (at 3rd Street), New York, NY.

Shot over a three-and-a-half-year period, “Can" provides a window into the inner dynamics of one Vietnamese-American family and their conflicts as the immigrant parents deal with the mental illness of their American raised son Can. The protagonist of this film, Can, is one of the few Asian Americans speaking publicly about living with depression and bipolar disorder, defying cultural norms. Bringing attention to a national behavioral health disparity, this real-life narrative allows viewers to examine critically social and systemic factors that affect Asian American families with mental illness.

For more information, go to http://nywift.org/article.aspx?id=4929

NYWIFT Member Screening Series: Can
Date/Time: Tuesday, Apr. 29, 20147:00 PM to 9:00 PM

Venue: Cellar 58, 58 Second Avenue (at 3rd Street), New York, NY
Pricing: $10 general admission
$6 for NYWIFT members
$8 for students, seniors, Women Make Movies, DCTV, IFP, Center for
Communications, Shooting People, IDA members
Tickets can also be purchased on the day of the screening at the Anthology Box office. Cash Only-No credit cards at the box office.
Box Office Location: Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Avenue at 2nd Street, New York, NY 10003; (212) 505-5181