The screening for Big Fight In Little Chinatown will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 3. This feature film will also be shown as an online screening from Nov 14 – 20.
Canada202287 minutesEnglish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Toisanese, FrenchCanadian PremiereDocumentary, Women Filmmakers
Taking a wide scope, Canadian documentary filmmaker Karen Cho’s Big Fight in Little Chinatown traverses Chinatowns in New York City, Montreal, Vancouver, Toronto, and San Francisco, shining a light on the twin legacies of displacement and resistance that characterize these neighbourhoods. Through interviews with business owners, community groups, and academics, Cho draws a line between the midcentury urban renewal projects that decimated North American Chinatowns and the current development pressures that threaten to drive away residents and organizations – and the community struggles against both.
Amid rapidly gentrifying urban landscapes that jeopardize the future of not only Chinatowns but many other urban racialized communities across the continent, Cho offers an incisive look into what it means to decide to stay rooted in a place that, despite all odds, has become a home.
– Vidhya Elango
Karen Cho
Karen Cho 曹嘉伦 is a Chinese Canadian filmmaker from Montreal known for her socio-political documentaries that explore themes of identity, immigration, and social justice.
Her work has touched on subjects such as the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act, asylum seekers, the Japanese internment, artist-activists and women’s rights.
The screening for Big Fight In Little Chinatown will be shown at TIFF Bell Lightbox 3. This feature film will also be shown as an online screening from Nov 14 – 20.
Rated PG
Content Warning: Coarse language, smoking, drinking, racist language and situations: historic depictions of racist violence
This film is presented with open English subtitles for non-English dialogue in-person and closed captions digitally.
Join us for a Q&A immediately after the theatrical presentation with director Karen Cho.
A collaborative exhibition by Jasmine Gui (special projects programmer, RA) & keiko Hart (co-curator), RA:X Puncta aims to present a plurality of punctum moments (as defined by Roland Barthes) that disturb and prick at diasporic Asian narratives and slip beyond an easy legibility of “Asianness”.
Asian Canadian comics will discuss the ways they’ve broken down barriers to tell their jokes to a wide audience on stage, in sketches, and on film and TV. Together, they’ll discuss their individual approaches to the craft, how they navigate stereotypes, personal experiences in their work, and how comedy has allowed them to challenge, explore, and find comfort in their identities.
This year’s Reel Ideas Conference gathers industry professionals, filmmakers, and performers to reflect on the specificity in their works, representing their own nuances along with their communities' lived experiences.
Founded in Toronto in 1997, Reel Asian is Canada’s largest pan-Asian film festival and a year-round cultural organization dedicated to championing Asian, Asian diasporic, and Asian Canadian filmmakers and artists. What began as a grassroots film festival has grown into a national platform supporting filmmakers and audiences through screenings, education, industry initiatives, artist development, and community programming presented across Toronto, the GTA, and online across Canada.
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