Chinatown Rising

Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s, a young San Francisco Chinatown resident armed with a 16mm camera and leftover film scraps from a local TV station, turned his lens onto his community.

In total, collecting more than 10 hours of footage, including the San Francisco State College Strike, the International Hotel eviction and successful grassroots organizing of the Chinatown Coalition for Better Housing, and more, Harry Chuck’s exquisite unreleased footage has captured a divided community’s struggles for self-determination.

Chinatown Rising is a documentary film about the Asian-American Movement from the perspective of the young residents on the front lines of their historic neighborhood in transition.

Publicly challenging the conservative views of their elders, their demonstrations and protests of the 1960s-1980s rattled the once quiet streets during the community’s shift in power.

In intimate interviews forty-five years later, these activists recall their roles and experiences in response to the need for social change.