Join CHSA for our RADIATING BRUCE LEE: CINEMA UNDER THE SKY series with a screening of THE ORPHAN accompanied by a talk from Hong Kong film critic Sam Ho on the Making of Bruce Lee.
Saturday, November 5 @ The Great Star Theater
2:00pm
Sam Ho on the Making of Bruce Lee
45 min. talk, followed by 30 min. Q&A
The Hong Kong-based curator, researcher, and writer Sam Ho will examine the syncretic identities of Bruce Lee and their formation in the nexus of postwar, colonial Hong Kong.
4:00pm
Special Screening!
THE ORPHAN
Hong Kong, 1960
Director: Lee Sun-fung
This social-issue drama was Bruce Lee’s swan song to the Cantonese cinema in which he had been a child star, and the last film he made before leaving Hong Kong to study in the US. The teenage Lee plays a wild child whose thievery one day lands him in the path of a kindly headmaster. The venerable Cantonese actor Ng Cho-fan, also the film’s screenwriter and producer, plays the older man who tries to reform the apparently orphaned boy. Lee’s preternatural grace in motion and onscreen charisma are amply on display, notably in a nightclub scene in which he dances the cha-cha. As with its Eastmancolor vistas of a Hong Kong transiting to modernity, The Orphan also accords an enticing glimpse of an international star on the verge.
Digital video, in Cantonese with English subtitles, 104 min.
Schedule
2:00pm – Hong Kong film critic Sam Ho on the Making of Bruce Lee
4:00pm – Movie Screening Begins
5:45pm – Movie Screening Ends
6:00pm – Event Ends
About CHSA
The Chinese Historical Society of America in San Francisco is the oldest organization in the country dedicated to the presentation and preservation of Chinese American history. Since 1963, CHSA has strived to be a responsible steward of the remarkable narrative of the Chinese American community through education, exhibitions, and programming.
A big thank you to our partners the Bruce Lee Foundation, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, and Center for Asian American Media.