CAAMFest gets back to its roots
As CAAMFest, based for years in Japantown, spreads its wings to the Mission District and Oakland, the film festival has made sure to come back to a very important part of its roots: Chinatown.
This is the fourth year that CAAMFest, put on by the Center for Asian American Media and the oldest and largest Asian American film festival in the United States, has placed a small cluster of programs and special presentations in what is perhaps San Francisco’s best-known and most historic neighborhood.
“CAAMFest’s origins are rooted in Chinatown, so it’s been incredibly rewarding to bring these bold, unique films there for the past four years,” festival director Masashi Niwano said. “As our Chinatown evolves, it’s our mission to showcase films that reflect these changes and also honor it’s rich history.”
There will be three programs in Chinatown during the festival’s first weekend, two at the classic Great Star Theater, highlighted by the premiere of Jim Choi and Chihiro Wimbush’s documentary “The People’s Hospital” (3 p.m. Sunday, March 12), which chronicles the opening of the new facilities of the Chinese Hospital, San Francisco’s last independent hospital — the only Chinese hospital in the U.S. — which traces its roots back to the 19th century.
“It’s called ‘The People’s Hospital’ because the residents of Chinatown are in no small measure by and large low-income residents who live in SROs (singleroom occupancies) who have little to nothing,” Choi said. “The fact that (the hospital) was able to raise a third of their operating budget from the general public is a testament to how much that institution means to the people there.”
Also playing at the Great Star (636 Jackson St., S.F.), which first opened in 1925, is “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James’ latest documentary, “Abacus: Small Enough to Jail” (6 p.m. Sunday, March 12), about the family-run bank that was the only American bank to face criminal charges in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
Chinatown’s wellknown relationship with food is the subject of the short film program “Eat Chinatown” (7 p.m. Saturday, March 11, at 41
Ross, a community space at that address), part of the Eat Chinatown spring exhibit (www.chinatowncdc.org/ eat-chinatown). Included is Kerry Chan’s short “Sunday Dinner,” which follows a San Francisco resident (“Willie” Kwok Wai Chan) through his normal Sunday ritual: picking fresh ingredients at Chinatown markets and preparing dishes from his childhood for his multigenerational family.
The common thread in these programs is of the enduring strength and resiliency of Chinatown communities.
Nowhere is that better exemplified than in “The People’s Hospital,” which among other things, serves as a tribute to the late Rose Pak, who might have given her last long-form interview for this film (she sat for Choi and Wimbush for three hours shortly before her death in September).
Pak was instrumental in coordinating the funding for the new hospital, built on the site of the original 1924 building where Bruce Lee was famously born. And although the film also features former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and current Mayor Ed Lee, the film’s heart, both structurally and emotionally, is with the non-famous doctors, nurses, staff and patients and their daily lives.
In fact, the hospital’s waiting room serves as a de facto community center. Some elderly Chinatown residents gather there just to pass the time, and are welcomed with open arms by the staff.
“These nurses and the medical staff there, they’re not just attuned to the patients medically, but they’re like a part of their whole existence,” Wimbush said. “You see elderly people sit there through half the day and chat with the staff, and that might be some of their primary social interactions. The nurses look out for them in terms of reading forms or bills in English they don’t understand. Almost playing the role of social workers or even friends.
“That was something that really struck me and moved me . ... Given the political climate now, I think these kind of stories, how a community came together to take their own health care needs in their own hands, is empowering. On a positive note, it’s what communities can do for themselves when they’re faced with those challenges.”
Choi observed that the Chinese Hospital, like some other institutions in Chinatown, serves as a gateway to immigrants, something more important than ever.
“If you’re a linguistically isolated community, you don’t have the ability to navigate a mainstream system,” he said. “These people are your huddled masses.”