Weekly Eye Candy: Chinatown via Fukunaga, Yong Kim and Arteta

This week’s Eye Candy goes to Chinatown. Not Roman Polanski’s 1974 film but filmmakers Miguel Arteta, Patty Chang, Jem Cohen, Cary Fukunaga, So Yong Kim & Bradley Rust Gray, Amir Naderi, Sam Pollard, Shelly Silver, Rose Troche, and Wayne Wang & Richard Wong’s chinatown.  

While the cities of Paris, New York and Tokyo have all been showered with love via short film collectives, now the location specific neighborhood with an abundance of metropolitan settings will receive the same treatment. By way of the Museum of Chinese in America’s youtube channel, and displayed on site, the helmers mentioned above will give their unique visions on how they perceive this lower Manhattan area. Personally, I’m curious to see if on of these filmmakers can somehow visually detail the putrid smell.

Here’s the official word from the folks curating the project:

Chinatown is an evocative place. It exists in our cities, in our imaginations, on our television screens, and in our memories. It is at once a sprawling, vibrant immigrant community and a forgotten strip mall of buffet restaurants. Chinatown is the ultimate Hollywood metaphor and a space where families still live. The Chinatown Film Project tackles Chinatown’s elusiveness and its stereotyped representations by constructing new images for the viewer. The project starts locally, where we ask ten of New York’s most exciting filmmakers to present their unique visions of this global icon.

The Guy with the Cigarette directed by Miguel Arteta
Church Basement Bomb Shelter directed by Patty Chang
New York Night Scene directed by Jem Cohen
Kiwi Lotion directed by Cary Fukunaga
I Can’t Wait directed by So Yong Kim & Bradley Rust Gray
Fortune Cookie directed by Amir Naderi
Chinatown: In Their Own Words directed by Sam Pollard
Five Approaches directed by Shelly Silver
Sunday at 6 directed by Rose Troche
Tuesday directed by Wayne Wang & Richard Wong
Special Opening Trailer directed by Richard Wong