Chinatown's
last picture show
page 2
compared with 150 in 1997. And the ones that are being made are of such poor quality that they are difficult to distribute. Another problem is that nowadays fewer people are interested in going out to see Hong Kong movies.
"People change and habits change," says Helen Soo, general manager of Tai Seng Video Marketing, the largest distributor of Hong Kong films in North America and manager of the theatre since 1997. "As your family grows it's easier to just stay at home and rent a movie."
Although Soo's company is in the business of getting people to rent and buy movies, it also hopes to save the Great Star. "We're hoping to bring back the habit of going to the cinema in the Chinese community," Soo says. Earlier experiences are not hopeful: Tai Seng had to shut down another San Francisco Chinatown cinema, the World Theater, in 1998 due to a lack of patrons.
In
the mid-1800's, before the theaters came, Cantonese opera was just about
the only form of entertainment available in Chinatown. But opera soon
succumbed to the allure of Hong Kong cinema and in the 1930s the two largest
opera houses, the Sun Sing on Grant and the Great China (the forerunner
of the Great Star) on Jackson street began showing movies during the day.
It was filmmaker Joseph Sunn Jue who first brought Hong Kong films to San Francisco's Chinatown. He opened the 300-seat Grandview theater in the fall of 1940, laying the foundation for a series of theaters playing the best cinema Hong Kong had to offer. Now the building that once housed that theater is a bargain store.
Today, outside the Great Star on a cool winter night, young Chinese men and women hang out waiting for the next show. Anita Woo and her boyfriend buy tickets to the 6 o'clock showing of "Hot War." They are dressed stylishly in black pants and leather jackets. They are part of the 20-something crowd that frequents this theater. But they come not because it is the hip place to go these days. They come because there is nowhere else to go.
"This is the only place I can go to see Hong Kong movies, unless I rent them," said Woo, 21, who moved to the United States last November from Hong Kong. She is now attending Laney College in Oakland. "But the American theaters are a lot better. Here it's dirty inside and it smells bad."
Woo and her friends are part of a new generation of immigrants arriving in the United States from Hong Kong following its return to China in 1997. They bring with them a strong love of movies and, perhaps, a hope for the future of the cinema in Chinatown.
Pius
Lee
Political star
Peter
Louis
Feng shui master
Phoebe
Man
21st century artist
Martin
Yan
Celebrity chef
Coming soon
In
late May, journalism students from
UC
Berkeley will travel to
Hong Kong. Watch for their reports.