Imaginary Chinatown

Series Site

"At once a place of yearning for the farflung homelands of an ever-growing pan-Asian population abroad and a locale onto which the West’s collective fantasy of the Orient can be projected, the exotic exteriors and supposedly mysterious, vice-ridden corridors of Chinatown have never failed to stir the imagination of Hollywood. While far too often trafficking in insidious stereotypes, when not exclusively featuring white actors these were among the first films to create roles—albeit caricatured ones—for pioneering Asian-American performers. Metrograph pays tribute to the complex tradition of Chinatown on film."-Metrograph