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March 7, 2004
On March 7th, we’re co-presenting a film and discussion at the NAATA film festival. See the Naata festival schedule for more info.
- Date/Time
- March 7th, 12pm
- Location
- Castro Theater
- The film: The Toll of the Sea
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Naata says:
This film is full of firsts. It was written by Frances Marion, one of Hollywood’s pioneering women writers and the first person to win two Oscars for screenwriting. It was the first commercial film to use the early two-strip Technicolor process. And it made a star of Anna May Wong, at seventeen the first US-born Asian American to head the cast of a major Hollywood feature.
Marion acknowledged that the story was “practically the step-daughter of MADAME BUTTERFLY.” Wong plays Lotus Flower, the beautiful Chinese girl seduced and abandoned by her white lover, a shipwrecked American. Lotus Flower accepts the man as a gift from the “Siren Sea,” only to pay a heavy toll.
- The Panel: Dangerous to Know: The Career and Legacy of Anna May Wong
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As we near the centennial of her birth, the influence of Ms. Wong on American popular culture and consciousness is only growing in significance. The fame of actresses such as Lucy Liu have invited comparisons with Ms. Wong, and fueled renewed debates over racial stereotypes, gender roles and the responsibility of an actress to both her conscience and community.
- Panelists
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- Karen Leong, author of the forthcoming “The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong Chiang, and the Transformation of American Orientalism”
- Graham Russell Gao Hodges, author, “Anna May Wong: From Laundryman’s Daughter to Hollywood Legend”
- Nancy Kwan, actress: THE WORLD OF SUZIE WONG, FLOWER DRUM SONG
- Jacqueline Kim, actress: CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, BROKEDOWN PALACE
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