Too many of the Chinese diaspora’s leading female artists and performers have been forgotten. Director Luka Yuanyuan Yang wants to reclaim their transnational legacies.
In 2018, I received a scholarship for a six-month residency in the United States. My research project focused on the history of Chinese performances in America, from Chinese opera and film to Chinatown nightclubs. Of all the books, papers, and documentaries I read or watched during those six months, one stood out above all the others: “Golden Gate Silver Light,” a 2013 documentary about the San Francisco-born Chinese director Esther Eng.
By the time “Golden Gate Silver Light” came out, Eng had been largely forgotten for decades. Her legacy might have vanished forever, if not for the 2009 discovery of more than 600 photos and film stills at a garbage collection site near the San Francisco Airport. Anti-Asian racism was everywhere in early 20th century Hollywood: Even outstanding performers like Anna May Wong were typecast as stereotypical “Orientals.” Eng, 10 years younger than Wong, was all too familiar with this state of affairs, but she refused to be silenced. In 1939, after a few years spent honing her craft in Hong Kong and just before returning to the United States, she directed the world’s first all-Chinese, all-female-cast film: “It’s a Women’s World.”
Luka Yuanyuan Yang is a visual artist and filmmaker. She is the director of “Coby and Stephen Are in Love” and the forthcoming “Women’s World.”
