Screening and Panel Discussion of Daughter of Shanghai

This 1937 film stars Anna May Wong and Philip Ahn in a thriller about a woman in San Francisco Chinatown trying to avenge her father’s murder committed by an illegal-immigrant trafficking gang.  Wong and Ahn were both born in the United States in 1905 and American citizens by birth. The film was highly unusual in featuring two Asian American leads in an era of “yellowface” when White actors typically played headline Asian characters. In 2006, the Library of Congress selected Daughter of Shanghai for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry.