(Note from the editor: Ursula Liang’s documentary 9 Man debuts Sunday, April 27 as part of IFF Boston at 1pm at the Somervile Theater. The film about a mean game of streetball popularized in the streets of Chinatown will then travel to the West Coast where it is a Grand Jury Prize Finalist at the *LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. Below is an article on 9 Man which originally was published in December 2012)
Street Volleyball is strictly an Asian American game. Latitude reports the game is played on urban streets with all the trappings you would find in a ghetto– broken glass, hard asphalt and bloody knees.
The game has its origins from America’s historic ghettoization of Chinese immigrants. Filmmaker Ursula Liang is working on a documentary of this uniquely Asian American phenomenon.
Last year 4,000 people came out to watch the finals in Boston.
“A huge element of this tournament isn’t athletic, it’s cultural. It’s about people spending time with other Chinese-Americans.”
