Thursday, May 29, 2025 | 6pm to 8pm
Calandra Institute
25 West 43rd Street, 17th Floor
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan
Join the Asian American / Asian Research Institute for a special AANHPI Heritage Month screening of the documentary Chinatown Rising, followed by Q&A with co-director Josh Chuck.
Synopsis
Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s, 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), Harry Chuck’s exquisite unreleased footage has captured a divided community’s struggles for self-determination. Chinatown Rising is a documentary film co-directed by father-son team Harry and Josh Chuck, about 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.
