Information about a Chinese American-owned film company has emerged in a new exhibition at the Museum of Chinese in America in New York, reports NPR
Douglas Lee, a a film and TV executive who has worked at HBO and 20th Century Fox, discovered that his grandfather Harold in the late 1920s, launched the New York Chinese Film Exchange.
“Everybody’s mind is a little bit blown,” Lee says of his family’s reaction to the recent discovery. “It’s part of my family history that nobody really knew about or talked about until I did this research.”
The company emerged following outrage over the 1921 release of the First Born. The film depicted Chinese life as full of drugs, opium dens, and brothels. Chinese community leaders protested the film and the studio told them to go make their own films, so incredibly, they did.
The Great Wall Film Company was born and it went on to produce some 30 films.
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You can read more about this new exhibition and find a link to one of the Great Wall Film Company’s movies on NPR.
