HOLLYWOOD CHINESE 

■AT THE MOVIES

“Hollywood Chinese” From yellowface to the year 2000

By Andrew Hamlin

NORTHWEST ASIAN WEEKLY

Filmmaker and writer Arthur Dong, member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists, watched hundreds of hours of film preparing for his new curated series, “Hollywood Chinese: The First 100 Years,” starting Nov. 4 at Los Angeles’ Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.

But according to Dong, this series, and the thousands of hours of film he’s watched in total, go back to one afternoon long ago in his native San Francisco.

“The first film that made me want to be a filmmaker was Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds,’” Dong remembered. “I was no more than 10. When that film ended, it was not an ending at all, it was a big question. What was going to happen to these people?

“It just astounded me. For days afterwards, I was making up stories about them.”

He was still in high school when he shot a short film, using his own bedroom as a studio. He went into documentary filmmaking as an adult. The most important lesson he’s learned over the years, he says, is to trust his interview subjects and to let them, not himself, guide the story paths.

His 2007 documentary “Hollywood Chinese” includes clips from dozens of Hollywood films, plus interviews with roughly 20 actors and filmmakers. Its mission is to document the history of the Chinese as seen through Hollywood’s eyes.

“There had been documentaries to focus on certain aspects of that topic, but not with the narrative arc that I wanted to have, which is the first 100 years of [Hollywood] history,” said Tong. “So I said, ‘Well, no one’s going to do it, that’s where I come in. That’s my job.’”

The documentary took 10 years of research and film watching. His interview subjects included Joan Chen, B.D. Wong, Ang Lee, Nancy Kwan, Lisa Lu, David Henry Hwang, and Justin Lin.

Some of the most interesting viewpoints come from non-Chinese actors who participated in yellowface— Christopher Lee, Luise Rainer, and Turhan Bey. “I have certain feelings about yellowface,” Dong explained, “but I really want to hear their feelings and their experience and their point of view. What I learned from each one of them is that there are

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