Ha ha Shanghai / by Christine Choy.

Format:

Video

Author/Creator:

Choy, Christine, author.

Contributor:

Alexander Street Press.

Series:

Filmakers library online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shanghai (China)--Social life and customs.

Shanghai (China).

Genre:

Documentary films.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (78 minutes)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Filmakers Library, 2001.

Language Note:

In English.

System Details:

digital

data file

Summary:

In 1992 the filmmaker Christine Choy returned to Shanghai for the first time in over thirty years: to track down the title of her family's house. She also wanted to locate an old schoolmate. She found her quest was like going down the rabbit hole with Franz Kafka as a tour guide. Her mother had abandoned the family's house on leaving China for the U.S. in the early 1960's. Christine was sent to innumerable city housing authorities and agencies only to find that the house had never been registered with the city of Shanghai and the government had taken over the property when her mother left. Trying to take it back from the city now would "shame the city and therefore the country" and would be considered traitorous. Christine finally located her old girlfriend, Li Dao Wen, at the Music Conservatory after several baffling interviews with Li's estranged relatives and innumerable fortune tellers. The filmmaker found many people in Shanghai still haunted by the ghosts of the Cultural Revolution and guarded in their speech to avoid being labeled "anti-social. Her trip had become a frustrating voyage into the nature of modern China.

Notes:

Originally released as DVD.

Title from resource description page (viewed May 24, 2011).

Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, 2001

Taipei Golden Horn International Film Festival, 2001

OCLC:

747797735

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.