The National Film Registry named the Joy Luck Club Monday morning to its list of noteworthy films it will preserve in the Library of Congress.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the 1983 Wayne Wang classic is one of 25 films added to the list today and the second of his films to make it. In 1995, the NFR selected Wang’s first film Chan is Missing (1982) for preservation.
Based on a best selling novel by Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club centers around the stories of Chinese American women and their immigrant mothers.
“It was a nice surprise,” Wang told The San Francisco Chronicle. “As a Chinese American making Chinese American films, it means a lot to me. There are so few of us filmmakers, and so few of these films that to be part of the library that’s going to go down in history is really, really wonderful. I’m very honored.”
Wang recalled to the Chronicle the hesitancy of Hollywood film studios to greenlight his film. He said every studio turned it down until Disney reluctantly agreed to do it under its now defunct Hollywood Pictures banner.
The actors featured in the film included several familiar names- Ming-Na Wen, Rosalind Chao, Tamlyn Tomita, Vivian Wu and Russell Wong.
“I could have never imagined after reading a few chapters of Amy’s manuscript that eventually became The Joy Luck Club book that my dream of its adaptation would result in a movie that is still talked about decades later,” said producer Janet Yang to THR. “When people tell me — and so many from so many cultures have — that the movie helped heal a rift with their family, I am immensely gratified, and it reminds me of the power of the moving image.”
Other films selected for preservation this year include Grease (1978), The Blues Brothers (1980) and The Hurt Locker (2008).
You can see the complete list in The Hollywood Reporter.
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Might as well do the same for Rising Sun.