Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
Part memoir, part history, part investigation, in “Chinese Couplets,” filmmaker Felicia Lowe searches for answers about her mother’s emigration to America during the Chinese Exclusion era. Lowe’s documentary reveals the often painful price paid by immigrants who abandoned their personal identity, the burden of silence they passed on to their offspring, and the intergenerational strife between immigrants and their American born children.
Felicia Lowe is an award-winning independent television producer, director, and writer with more than 35 years of production experience. Lowe received an EMMY for Best Cultural Documentary for “Chinatown: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco.” Her other documentaries, “Carved in Silence,” about the experiences of Chinese immigrants detained on Angel Island Immigration Station, and “China: Land of My Father,” a personal journey to China to meet her paternal grandmother, have garnered numerous awards and also been broadcast on PBS and abroad.
Prior to her documentary work, Lowe worked in children’s television and broadcast journalism. She has also taught film production at San Francisco State University and Stanford University. A descendant of Angel Island detainees, she has been actively involved in the preservation of the Angel Island Immigration Station.