Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words

Last updated
Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words
Directed by Yunah Hong
Written byYunah Hong
Produced byYunah Hong and William Smock (executive producer)
Starring
  • Doan Ly
CinematographyLiam Dalzell, Eric Lin
Edited byYunah Hong
Music byKevin Norton
Production
company
Eastwind Productions
Release date
  • 2010 (2010)
Running time
56 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words is a 2010 American documentary film written, directed, and produced by Yunah Hong. [1] It chronicles the life and career of the first Asian American Hollywood film star, Anna May Wong. The film later aired on KPBS (TV) May 23, 2014. [2]

Contents

Plot

Anna May Wong was the first Chinese American Hollywood star. As a young girl she knew she wanted to be a movie star, and by 17 she had become one. She went on to act in nearly sixty films in Hollywood, London and Berlin. She was one of the few silent film actors to successfully transition to sound cinema and television. She co-starred with Marlene Dietrich, Anthony Quinn and Douglas Fairbanks along the way. She was beautiful, glamorous, talented and cultured, but she was typecast for most of her career as either a scheming dragon lady or a painted doll. Due to the Hays production code, she could never kiss a Caucasian man on screen, so she could never be the one to end up with the leading man.

The documentary paints a vivid picture of a Hollywood original, summoning Wong's own words, from private correspondences and public interviews, to narrate her own complex and rich history. Actress Doan Ly portrays Anna May Wong in enacted sequences of the documentary. With generous excerpts from Wong's films and archival photographs, Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words is a detailed portrait of an extraordinary woman living ahead of her time. The documentary is an engrossing and imaginative survey of Wong's career, exploring the impact Wong had on images of Asian American women in Hollywood. [1]

Production

Production of the film began in 2003, with interviews of Susan Ahn Cuddy, A. C. Lyles, Conrad Doerr, Tamlyn Tomita, BD Wong, James Hong, Terence Pepper, Graham Russell Gao Hodges, Karen J Leong, Peter X Feng, Thomas Doherty, and Tim Bergfelder, among others. Shooting of the reenactments with actress Doan Ly was done in 2008. The documentary was shot in the US and England.

The documentary is funded by New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, Center for Asian American Media, Asian Women Giving Circle, NY Korean Cultural Service, Tiger Baron Foundation, and Urban Artists Initiatives. [3]

Release

The documentary first premiered at the Busan International Film Festival, Wide Angle Showcase in Korea on October 9 and 11, 2010. [4] It was then showcased at numerous festivals, including the Korean American Film Festival of Los Angeles in 2012, the Vancouver Asian Film Festival in 2011, the Asian American International Film Festival, DC Asian Pacific American Film Festival, and the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. [5] [6] It was nationally broadcast by PBS in May 2013, May 2014 and March 2015. [7] It is distributed by Women Make Movies.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zhang Ziyi</span> Chinese actress and model (born 1979)

Zhang Ziyi is a Chinese actress, model, and former dancer. She is regarded as one of the Four Dan Actresses of China.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gong Li</span> Chinese actress

Gong Li is a Chinese actress. Regarded as one of the best actresses in China today, she is known for her versatility and naturalistic performance. She starred in three of the four Chinese-language films that have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fann Wong</span> Singaporean actress (born 1971)

Fann Woon Fong, known professionally as Fann Wong, is a Singaporean actress, singer, businesswoman and model. She has been referred to as one of MediaCorp's Ah Jie for being one of the most successful actresses from Singapore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna May Wong</span> American actress (1905–1961)

Wong Liu Tsong, known professionally as Anna May Wong, was an American actress, considered the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood, as well as the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. Her varied career spanned silent film, sound film, television, stage, and radio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nancy Kwan</span> Chinese-American actress (born 1939)

Nancy Kwan Ka-shen is a Chinese-American actress. In addition to her personality and looks, her career benefited from Hollywood's casting of more Asian roles in the 1960s, especially in comedies. She was considered an Eastern sex symbol in the 1960s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Krusiec</span> American actress

Michelle Jacqueline Krusiec is an American actress, writer and producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maggie Q</span> American actress (born 1979)

Margaret Denise Quigley, professionally known as Maggie Q, is an American actress.

Quentin Lee is a Hong Kong-born Canadian-American film writer, director, and producer. He is most notable for the television series Comedy InvAsian and feature films The People I've Slept With (2009), Ethan Mao (2004), and Shopping for Fangs (1997), which he co-directed with Justin Lin.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Randall Park</span> American actor (born 1974)

Randall Park is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Louis Huang in the ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat (2015–2020), for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 2016.

Oh, Saigon is a 2007 autobiographical documentary by Vietnamese American director Doan Hoang about her family's separation during the fall of Saigon and her attempt to reunite them afterwards. Oh, Saigon was executive produced by Academy Award and Emmy winner, John Battsek. Oh, Saigon received film grants from the Sundance Institute Documentary Fund, ITVS, and the Center for Asian American Media, and after its release, received a number of film festival awards and accolades.

Asian Americans have been involved in the U.S. entertainment industry since the 19th century, when Afong Moy started a series of shows that evolved into essentially one-women shows. In the mid-19th century, Chang and Eng Bunker became naturalized citizens and were successful performers in the United States. Sadakichi Hartman, originally from Japan, was a successful playwright in the 1890s. Acting roles in television, film, and theater were relatively few, and many available roles were for narrow, stereotypical characters. Early Asian American actors such as Sessue Hayakawa, Anna May Wong, and Bruce Lee encountered a movie-making culture and industry that wanted to cast them as caricatures. Some, like actress Merle Oberon, hid their ethnicity to avoid discrimination by Hollywood's racist laws.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khánh Ly</span> Vietnamese singer

Khánh Ly is a Vietnamese-American singer. She performed many songs written by Vietnamese composer Trịnh Công Sơn and rose to fame in the 1960s. She married South Vietnam journalist Nguyễn Hoàng Đoan in 1975.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anna May Wong on film and television</span>

Anna May Wong was an American actress of Chinese heritage, who grew up in a culturally diverse neighborhood adjacent to Chinatown, Los Angeles. Her father believed in exposing his family to the creative arts, and often took them to see traditional Chinese stage productions. Young Anna, however, was fascinated by the emerging film industry in the area, and would fantasize herself as a movie actress like Pearl White or Mary Pickford. Her daydreams began to look like an achievable goal when local Baptist minister James Wang, who often worked with the film productions, recommended her as an extra in the Alla Nazimova silent production of The Red Lantern. Wong was only 14 years old, and eventually left school before graduating. While still a teenager, she was cast in the lead role of Lotus Flower in The Toll of the Sea.

Doan Hoang or Đoan Hoàng or Doan Hoàng Curtis is a Vietnamese-American documentary film director, producer, editor, and writer. She directed and produced the 2007 documentary Oh, Saigon about her family, after leaving Vietnam on the last civilian helicopter as Saigon fell. The documentary won several awards at film festivals and was broadcast on PBS from 2008 to 2012, and multiple channels at streaming services. Hoang was selected to be a delegate to Spain for the American Documentary Showcase. Hoang has received awards and grants from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Center for Asian American Media, the Ms. Foundation for Women, Brooklyn Arts Council, and National Endowment of the Humanities.

<i>To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shens Journey</i> 2009 film

To Whom It May Concern: Ka Shen's Journey is a 2009 docudrama about actress Nancy Kwan. Directed and written by former Warner Bros. executive Brian Jamieson, the film depicts Kwan's meteoric rise to fame when she was selected to star in the 1960 film The World of Suzie Wong and the 1961 film Flower Drum Song. In an era when White people played the Asian roles in Hollywood, Kwan's achievement was groundbreaking. The film portrays Kwan's being cast for inconspicuous roles after her early success.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Awkwafina</span> American actress, comedian and rapper (born 1988)

Nora Lum, known professionally as Awkwafina, is an American actress, comedian and rapper. She rose to prominence in 2012 when her rap song "My Vag" became popular on YouTube. She then released her debut album, Yellow Ranger (2014), and appeared on the MTV comedy series Girl Code (2014–2015). She expanded to films with supporting roles in the comedies Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (2016), Ocean's 8 (2018), Crazy Rich Asians (2018), and Jumanji: The Next Level (2019). For her starring role as a grieving young woman in The Farewell (2019), she won a Golden Globe Award.

<i>Keye Luke</i> (film) 2012 American film

Keye Luke is a 2012 American short film directed by Timothy Tau, written by Timothy Tau, Ed Moy and Feodor Chin, and produced by Timothy Tau.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thuc Doan Nguyen</span> American film director

Thuc Doan Nguyen is a writer and producer. She founded "The Bitch Pack", a group dedicated to promoting female-driven screenplays through Twitter and other social media sites. Nguyen is the winner of a 2020 Sundance Institute Inclusion Initiative Fellowship which enabled her to attend the Sundance Film Festival that year, the same year her screenplay "Scent of the Delta" was in Round 2 of the Development Labs (semi-finalist). She is also the founder of the original "#StartWith8Hollywood" which expands opportunities for women creators of color. Nguyen is also the founder of the online portal Spooky Spaces. Nguyen is also the founder and captain of the first ever Vietnamese American Mardi Gras Krewe since the carnival began. She appears on the original Ringer/Spotify 2023 series "The Big Picture" regarding "Vietnam Vogue" along with Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Choy</span> Chinese-American filmmaker

Christine Choy is a Chinese-American filmmaker. She is known for co-directing Who Killed Vincent Chin?, a 1988 film based on the murder of Vincent Jen Chin, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. She co-founded Third World Newsreel, a film company focusing on people of color and social justice issues. As a documentary filmmaker, she has produced and directed more than eighty films. She is a professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Tyrus is a 2015 feature-length documentary directed by Pamela Tom about the renowned Chinese American artist Tyrus Wong, whose paintings became the inspiration for the classic animated feature Bambi.

References

  1. 1 2 "Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words". wmm.com. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  2. "Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words". kpbs.org. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  3. "Film + Video Show and Tell #5: Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words". theatermania.com. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  4. "Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words". biff.kr. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  5. "Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words". asiancinevision.org. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  6. "D.C. Asian Pacific American Film Festival Oct 6th-15th". asiansonfilm.com. Retrieved 2020-08-24.
  7. "Anna May Wong: In Her Own Words". azpm.org. Retrieved 2020-08-24.