Chan Is Missing
Acclaimed filmmaker Wayne Wang's first feature film CHAN IS MISSING follows the adventures of two cabbies on their search through San Francisco's Chinatown for a mysterious character who has disappeared with $4,000 of their money. Their quest to figure out what happened to Chan and their missing cash leads them on a humorous journey that illuminates the pitfalls of Chinese-Americans trying to assimilate into contemporary American society.
Winner of Best Experimental/Independent Film at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards. Selected for preservation by the National Film Preservation Board, USA.
"A whimsical treasure of a film that gives us a real feeling for the people of San Francisco's Chinatown." - Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
(Photo credit: Nancy Wong, 1981)
Running Time
77 mins
Year
1982
Kanopy ID
1113859
Filmmakers
Languages
Subjects
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Comments (1)
Just about as Independent and idiosyncratic as you can get, CHAN IS MISSING is a kind of postmodern, postcolonial film noir that cleverly utilizes the tropes of the genre (while re-appropriating the controversial figure of Charlie Chan) to ruminate on the complexity of Chinese-American ...Read more
Just about as Independent and idiosyncratic as you can get, CHAN IS MISSING is a kind of postmodern, postcolonial film noir that cleverly utilizes the tropes of the genre (while re-appropriating the controversial figure of Charlie Chan) to ruminate on the complexity of Chinese-American identity. As the two main characters drift through the streets of San Francisco's Chinatown, the ghostly spaces occupied in the experience of assimilation are explored in all of their intricacies. Humorous, existential, mysterious, and energizing, this is the kind of movie that makes you fall in love with movies.
(P.S.: catch the maritime museum and pier right outside Kanopy's headquarters at around the 59-minute mark. There's something so comforting about seeing the places you dwell as they were long before you were ever there..)
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