'Chinatown Rising' film showing and Q&A, Feb. 21

The Marcus Endowed Chair of Social Justice Film in the School of Cinema will host a showing of the film “Chinatown Rising,” co-directed by alumnus Harry Chuck (pictured), on Tuesday, Feb. 21, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the Coppola Theater. Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement of the mid-1960s, Chuck, then a young San Francisco Chinatown resident armed with a 16mm camera and leftover film scraps from a local TV station, turned his lens onto his community. Totaling more than 20,000 feet of film (10 hours), Chuck’s exquisite unreleased footage captured a divided community’s struggles for self-determination.

Harry Chuck earned his M.A. from SF State’s Film Arts Department, where he served as a student assistant in film history. “Chinatown Rising” uses his footage from the ’60s to help tell the story of the Asian American movement from the perspective of the young residents on the front lines of their historic neighborhood in transition. Through publicly challenging the conservative views of their elders, their demonstrations and protests of the 1960s-1980s rattled the once-quiet streets during the community’s shift in power. Forty-five years later, in intimate interviews, these activists recall their roles and experiences in response to the need for social change. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with co-directors/producers Josh Chuck and Harry Chuck.

This event is sponsored by Asian American Studies, AAPI Student Services and ASPIRE. Learn more about the screening on the College of Ethnic Studies website.