USA,
1984, 116 min
Shown in 1984
CREDITS
- dir
-
Marva Nabili
- prod
-
Thomas A. Fucci
- scr
-
Marva Nabili, Fae Ng
- cam
-
Ben Davis
- editor
-
Fritz Liepe
- cast
-
Mabel Kwong, Ida Chung, Victor Wong, David Lee
Nightsongs is a dramatization of the struggle of a Chinese immigrant family as seen through the eyes of a Chinese/Vietnamese relative during her stay with them in New York City’s Chinatown. The story highlights the characters’ cultural alienation and their difficulties in assimilating into a different economic and cultural environment through a series of poetic diary entries and letters written by the visiting cousin in response to her new experience. The family’s drama unfolds against a background of hard work in Chinatown’s sweatshops; in the problems the young people face coping with school and home life and the lure of the gangs; and through the hardships fought against these forces that persistently seek to undermine the family unity and cultural pride. The director is an expatriate woman filmmaker from Iran.
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
