In-person Q&A with Directors Xinyan Fu, Curtis Chan, Kenneth Eng, and Lenora Lee after the screening.
Art, Community and Boston Chinatown
Directed by Xinyan Fu
Documentary | 17 minutes | English
A documentary about community artists who use their platforms and projects to uplift Chinatown community voices and Asian American experiences in the grater Boston area.
Director’s Bio – Xinyan Fu
Xinyan Fu (she/her) is an audience strategist and producer who loves data and interactive storytelling. Graduated from Emerson College in 2022, she started exploring a career in audience engagement because she wishes to produce accessible stories for her community. The documentary, Art, Community, and Boston Chinatown, is part of her capstone project, where she produced 5 stories through different mediums — writings, photos, podcast, and video.
Dear Corky
Directed by Curtis Chin, Produced by Kenneth Eng
Documentary | 15 minutes | English | New England Premiere
Documentary short on famed street photographer, Corky Lee, who recently passed away from COVID. Over the course of fifty years, he covered the most important events in Asian American history, including issues of hate crimes.
Director’s Bio – Curtis Chin
Curtis Chin has received awards from ABC/Disney Television, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts and more. Chin has screened his films, Vincent Who? and Tested, with over 600 entities in sixteen countries including the White House, Amnesty International, and the Government of Norway. A co-founder of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, he is writing a memoir, “Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant.”
Convergent Waves: Boston
By Lenora Lee
Documentary | 52 minutes | English | World Premiere
“Convergent Waves: Boston” by Lenora Lee Dance, in collaboration with Pao Arts Center, celebrates the contributions of activists and non-profit leaders, reclaiming space by eliciting stories of community agency, resilience, and transformation. Inspired by rich narrative, this work represents a powerful call for community oriented development in the face of rapid change, making a collective statement for the preservation of community as neighborhoods across the country inhabited for generations face cultural erosion, loss of businesses, and displacement through gentrification. “Convergent Waves: Boston” highlights successes in preserving the cultural fabric and accomplishments of these communities.no
Director’s Bio – Lenora Lee
Lenora Lee Dance (LLD) integrates contemporary dance, film, music, and research and has gained increasing attention for its sustained pursuit of issues related to immigration, incarceration, global conflict, and its impacts, particularly on women and families. LLD creates works that are both set in public and private spaces, intimate and at the same time large-scale, inspired by individual stories as well as community strength, at times crafted for the proscenium, or underwater, or in the air, and at times are site-responsive, immersive, and interactive. For the last 14 years, the company has been pushing the envelope of large-scale multimedia and immersive dance performance that connects various styles of movement and music to culture, history, and human rights issues. Its work has grown to encompass the creation, presentation, and screening of films, museum and gallery installations, civic engagement, and educational programming.
Wise Words from an Old Friend
Directed by Kenneth Eng
Documentary | 4 minutes | English
Our old friend Tunney Lee offers words of advice for the next generation.
Director’s Bio – Kenneth Eng
Kenneth Eng is a director, editor and executive producer. After graduating from Boston Latin School, Ken left for New York in 1994 to study film at the School of Visual Arts. His thesis Scratching Windows, a short documentary film about graffiti writers, was broadcast as part of the doc series REEL NY on WNET – NY PBS. In 2001, Ken directed and edited Take Me to The River a feature length documentary about the Maha Kumbh Mela festival in Allahabad, India. Kokoyakyu: High School Baseball, his film about the famous Koshien Tournament in Japan was nationally broadcast on PBS as part of POV and continues to play in Japan on NHK-TV. In 2007, Ken was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to launch My Life In China. Recently, he edited Tested for director Curtis Chin. Ken is also involved in “The Great China Baseball Hunt”, a film about the rise of baseball in China.
Co-presented by:
Pao Arts Center
