Music Palace by Eric Lin
Our memories of Chinatown continue to this day, even as the neighborhood is changing. Through conversations with our neighbors and the stories we share, we remember the places that hold special significance to us.
Modern motion pictures had early roots in traditional Chinese shadow puppetry plays (皮影戲). Unsurprisingly, in Chinese, movies are called ‘electric shadows’ (電影). New York’s Chinatown — previously also known as New York City’s Theater District — was once home to at least 5 active movie theaters that were central to community life, with a theater on every corner at Canal and Bowery.
In this special screening of Eric Lin’s short documentary Music Palace (2005), we step back to the early 2000’s when Chinatown’s movie palaces were nearing extinction. As New York's last Chinatown movie theater is about to close, its caretakers ruefully look back at the life it once had.
We’ll hear from some of our Chinatown neighbors in the newest season of our Landmarks project, an ongoing audio exploration of memory and place, produced by T!C’s Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan, to revisit some of our own personal landmarks in Chinatown. This year, in partnership with artist Warren King and his beautiful cardboard sculptures, we memorialize and step into the lost arts and cultural spaces of our neighborhood.
Rochelle Hoi-Yiu Kwan is a cultural organizer, oral history educator, and DJ whose work aims to equip communities with the tools to build multigenerational oral history projects. Based on Lenape land in New York City’s Manhattan Chinatown, she builds her practice around engaging communities as the classroom and amplifying the essential roles of relationship building and the arts in storytelling and organizing.
Warren King is a figurative sculptor who works mostly with corrugated cardboard. He lives and works near New York’s Chinatown, where he gets much of his inspiration.
Eric Lin first started making films while studying sociology and film criticism at UC Berkeley. He went on to earn his MFA in film at NYU and he has since made New York his home while also working as a cinematographer on feature films such as “Intrusion”, “The Sound of Silence”, “Hearts Beat Loud”, “I Smile Back”, “Equity”, and “The Exploding Girl”.
Thank you to 21 Pell St for hosting this event.
“Landmarks” is made possible by funding from the National Trust’s “Telling the Full History Preservation Fund”.
