Dupont Guy: The Schiz of Grant Avenue and The Fall of the I-Hotel are screening for FREE on Thursday 3/31 as part of Under the Influence: Hua Hsu.
Writer Hua Hsu appears in person to present two films by Curtis Choy as part of our ongoing ‘Under the Influence’ series— wherein we ask people who inspire us to share documentaries that have inspired them.
Curtis Choy's work reminds us of how the radical politics of the 1960s and 70s demanded new approaches to form and storytelling. As a sound technician, his career indexes the history of Asian American filmmaking, from Wayne Wang's 'Chan is Missing' to Gene Cajayon's 'The Debut' to Justin Lin's 'Finishing the Game.' A punk energy courses through his own films. In 1976, he made 'Dupont Guy: The Schiz of Grant Avenue,' a frenetic, crass, utterly absorbing film essay that conveys the complicated psyche and din of Chinatown. In 1983, he directed 'The Fall of the I Hotel,' a poetic chronicle of the multi-racial, multi-generational community movement that arose to defend the elderly manongs of the I-Hotel, a low-income residential hotel in San Francisco's Manilatown, from eviction.
-Hua Hsu
Hua Hsu is a Staff Writer at The New Yorker. He is the author of “A Floating Chinaman: Fantasy and Failure Across the Pacific” and the forthcoming memoir “Stay True.” He's a board member of the Asian American Writers workshop and Critical Minded, an initiative to create more opportunities for cultural critics of color. After teaching at Vassar College since 2007, this summer, he will assume a new role as Professor of Literature at Bard College.
Films Include:
Dupont Guy: The Schiz of Grant Avenue
Curtis Choy, 1976, 35 min.
WHO WE ARE forms the unifying theme of Dupont Guy. It affirms the legitimacy of Chinese-American (nee Chonk) culture, exploring cross-cultural currents of San Francisco's Chinatown: assimilation, self-contempt, schizophrenic language, duplicitous behavior.
Dupont Guy is "DuPont Street" in Cantonese. After the 1906 earthquake, the city fathers re-named the street "Grant Avenue" hoping to redevelop and reclaim Chinatown for a new civic center. But the Chinese were not fooled and folks today still call it Dupont Guy. It is in this spirit of truth and defiance that Dupont Guy: The Schiz of Grant Avenue was created.
-Manilatown Media
The Fall of the I-Hotel
Curtis Choy, 1976, 59 min.
After a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown, the battle for housing in San Francisco ends in the brutal eviction of the elderly tenants of the International Hotel. "The Fall of the I-Hotel" serves as the witness to the community's fight to survive, and as a tribute to the dignity and strength of the Manongs.
Viewed continuously by students of Asian American Studies since its release in 1983, "The Fall of the I-Hotel" is available online with this remastered edition. Not only does this film document the struggle to save the I-Hotel, it provides an overview of Filipino American history. This is not just a story about old men in an old building, but of multiple tragedies: ethnic communities redeveloped out of existence, housing gobbled up by realtors, the shabby treatment of the elderly, and the betrayal of American ideals learned in the Philippines by its American pioneers.
-Manilatown Media
