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Trailer

Basic Information

Feature Documentary, 90 minutes, HDV, color and B/W

Written and Directed by S. Louisa Wei

Produced by Law Kar and S. Louisa Wei

Original Score by Robert Ellis-Geiger

Animation by Anna Walter

Sound Design by Charles C.W. Chan

Art Direction by Brian Chang and Max Willis

Sponsored by Hong Kong Art Development Council

Produced by Blue Queen Cultural Communication Ltd.

Synopsis

The stories of pioneering women are often lost in time because historians often find it difficult to “place” them within various larger historical contexts. This documentary is by no means a conventional “bio-pic” as it weaves together the life of Esther Eng (1914-70), a San Francisco-born “Golden Gate Girl” who made ten Chinese films on two sides of the Pacific, and juxtaposes it with the fascinating stories of two other pioneering women of the silver screen. One woman is Anna May Wong (1905-61), the first Chinese American actress to rise to international stardom and who inspired Esther to get into the filmmaking world. Anna May’s encounters in Hollywood reflect the limitation Esther may face in the American film industry due to her race, but her success in Hong Kong proves how she turned her American identity into an advantage within the Chinese film industry. The other woman is San Francisco born Dorothy Arzner (1897-1979), the first and only female director to successfully transition from Hollywood’s silent to the sound era, who poses as Esther’s American double with a similarly stunning style and lesbian identity. Esther and Dorothy are two of the real exceptions in the history of women directors who managed to build a successful directing careers without a mainstream identity. The three contemporaries lived in a period when war afforded them rare opportunities to achieve greatness, and yet their accomplishments were soon forgotten afterwards.

Esther Eng, once honoured as the “first woman director of China” and the only one during her directing career from 1937 to 1949, was a true pioneer in many senses. She crossed boundaries of language and culture by making 10 Cantonese language films for Chinese audiences during and after WWII. She was in fact the only woman directing feature-length films in America after Dorothy Arzner’s retirement in 1943 and before Ida Lupino began directing in 1949. When changing times made it no longer possible for her to continue making films, she turned her powers of innovation towards establishing a tradition of Chinese fine dining in New York City as early as 1949. The traces of her restaurants have long been integrated into an iconic part of the cityscape and period she once occupied. Drawing on the marks she left in both the Chinese and English press, this film begins to recover some of her lost stories. Clips from her two surviving films, stills and posters from her eight other motion pictures, photos from her six personal albums, newsreels of San Francisco as she saw them, as well as hundreds of archival images, are all collected to present her life and time in a display of stunning visuals.

Golden Gate Girls is not strictly a biography of Esther Eng, as almost none of Eng’s writings have been found. The documentary is a tribute to pioneer women filmmakers working on both sides of the Pacific and crossing the boundaries of language, culture, race and gender.

Director's Statement

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Esther Eng early photos.

My first encounter with Esther Eng took place in 2001 when I began conducting research on Chinese women directors. This research originated from the realization that women’s stories often got lost in the course of history writing, particularly in film history. Recovering such stories has become the main focus of my academic career. I did not consider making a documentary on Esther Eng until early 2009 when over 600 photos from her personal collection—including many stills from her films—fell into my hands. Her career, her life seemed to be an extraordinary case in the history of Hong Kong filmmaking, one that gave rise to many intriguing questions.

Wai Kim Fong starred in Heartaches.

Wai Kim Fong starred in Heartaches.

When I began to dig further into materials concerning Esther Eng, I found a few factors that together seemed to contribute to her success. First, she started her career with Heartaches (1935), a film with a patriotic mission. This helped her establish a positive public image with audiences on both sides of the Pacific as the second Sino-Japanese War was under way. Second, the fact that her first film was filled in a Hollywood studio was stressed and even exaggerated in local press, which gave her immense credibility as a new and young filmmaker. Third, her directorial debut was also a critical and box office success that opened up opportunities for more projects. Finally, she was able to draw talent from the many Cantonese opera performers who visited North and Central America during the 1940s during and after WWII. For 14 years of her life, she was an active professional filmmaker; but by the time of her death, she was mostly remembered as a restauranteur.

The movie poster of It’s a Woman’s World (1939).

The movie poster of It’s a Woman’s World (1939).

When reconstructing Esther’s life, I was constantly amazed by how many times she had personally journeyed across oceans but even more so by her casual boundary crossing in her everyday life. In order to find the narrative that would leave the most vivid impression of Esther and her time on the mind of today’s audience, this film has already gone through 8 complete versions.

S. Louisa Wei

MEDIA REVIEWS

REPORTAGE & INTERVIEWS

Rachel Mok, “Shine a Light on a Chinese-American Female Film Pioneer” in South Morning China Post, March 31, 2013.

Karen Chu, “‘Golden Gate Silver Light’ Doc Reveals Life of First Chinese-American Female Director” in The Hollywood Reporter, April 3, 2013.

Ru Xu, “Searching for a Forgotten Film Legend: Special Interview with the Director of Golden Gate Silver Light” (in Chinese如許《尋找被遺忘的電影人:專訪〈金門銀光夢〉導演魏時煜》) in Ming Pao Daily News《明報》, April 27, 2013.

Ray Kouguell, VOA Direct, “Documentary Golden Gate Silver Light Unveils the Little-known Life Story of the First Female Chinese-American Director” in Voice of America, May 23, 2012.

Huang Lu, “Documentary Director S. Louisa Wei: The Rights of Interpretation Should be Handed to the Audience” (in Chinese黃璐《紀錄片導演魏時煜:紀錄片應該把詮釋權交給觀衆》) in Southern Urban Daily《南方都市報》,Shenzhen, China, December 9, 2013.

Tian Bian, The 2nd DC Chinese Film Festival Opened, in Sing Tao Daily (East USA), September 6, 2014

Feng Zhaoyin, “DC Chinese Film Festival Opened with Warm Response” (in Chinese 馮兆音《華盛頓華語電影節開幕 好評如潮》) in World Journal, September 6, 2014,

Daniel Bidikov, “Dual Film Screening Asked to Whom History Belongs” in The Phoenix, October 9, 2014

Chitralekha Basu, “Gay Forever” in China Daily Hong Kong Edition, October 24, 2014, p.7.

Xuan Zi, “First Woman Director that Should Not be Forgotten by Chinese Film History: Interview with Golden Gate Girls Director S. Louisa Wei” (in Chinese 玄子《中國電影史不可遺忘的第一位華人女導演—專訪紀錄片〈金門銀光夢〉導演魏時煜) in Cinephilia, June 17, 2015. 

Huang Xiaohe, “Women Were Often Forgotten in Film History, So I Tried to Recovery Their Stories” (in Chinese 黃小河《電影史中的女性縂被遺忘,我試圖找回她們的故事—紀錄片〈金門銀光夢〉導演魏時煜還原“南華第一位女導演”伍錦霞勾連女性在美國電影與華語電影中的角色地位) in Oriental Morning Post, June 18, 2015, A28-29 and A31.

Video Interviews and Post-screening Q&A

Essays and Articles

Elizabeth Kerr (Critic, The Hollywood Reporter)

Documentary filmmaker S. Louise Wei sheds some much-needed light on a hidden piece of Hollywood, Hong Kong, women’s and Asian-American film history. … One of Golden Gate’s strengths is its seamless ability to weave history, Sino-U.S. relations and social standards together to allow for inference and context.

Derek Elley (Film Critic, Film Business Asia) Hong Kong film teacher Wei frames her film

as a personal journey of exploration, following the traces of Eng’s trail from Asia to the US, tracking down any survivors who knew of her, and assembling every piece of information that still remains. The portrait that emerges is of an energetic, sunny and determined woman for whom “boundaries of race, language, culture and gender… did not seem to exist.”

Kevin M. Thomas (Critic, The Examiner)

“Golden Gate Girls” is a wonderful documentary by Louisa Wei who digs deep into the past to tell us of pioneering lesbian director Esther Eng, one of the first female (and queer) Chinese American directors. Wei’s film is more than a loving tribute to Eng, set to the most amazing jazz music, but Wei also pays tribute to other pioneering and lesbian filmmakers such as Dorothy Arzner, who paved the road for many of our more recent female directors –gay or straight. The 90 minute film also is a beautiful refection of early San Francisco, where Eng made a lot of her movies. The film is able to cover a lot of ground with its short run time.

Kimberly Chun (Critic, San Francisco Bay Guardian)

What gets lost in translation? These directors, more often than not, foreground their attempts to read between the lines and penetrate a fog of forgetfulness and counter-histories in order to get to a few truths, subjective and otherwise. Such is the case of Hong Kong documentarian S. Louisa Wei, who unearths the once-dumpster-relegated tale of SF Chinatown-born-and-bred Esther Eng, the first Chinese American woman director, in Golden Gate Girls — with rich, mixed results.

Patricia White (Professor and Chair, Film and Media Studies, Swarthmore College, Board member, Women Make Movies)

In Golden Gate Girls, Louisa Wei tells the story of one remarkable woman and uncovers a rich chapter of film history that challenges both gender hierarchies and national narratives. With a captivating archive of hundreds of newly discovered images, prodigious research, and interviews with those who knew her, the film tells the story of San Francisco-born Esther Eng, the first woman to direct Chinese-language films in the US and the most prominent woman director in Hong Kong in the 1930s. She was also out as a lesbian—she sported mannish attire and lived with her leading lady. While Eng later became a celebrity as a New York restaurateur, her contribution to film history is sadly overlooked, her 11 feature films mostly lost. Golden Gate Girls restores Eng to her place in history, weaving her story in and out of those of Hollywood contemporaries, director Dorothy Arzner and actress Anna May Wong. With her oeuvre of women’s pictures, proud sexual and ethnic identity, and transnational career, Eng is an ideal subject for the novel forms of historiography scholars have devised to illuminate those fascinating figures. Wei, in turn, is an ideal interpreter, animating the archive with very contemporary questions of agency and cultural exchange. Through commentary on the tantalizing photographic record, she invites viewers to project their own movie fantasies onto the gaps in the historical record.

Bérénice Reynaud (Curator for San Sebastian Film Festival and Vienna Film Festival, Professor of Film at California Institute of the Arts)

Esther Eng gave Bruce Lee his first role, as an infant (talk about “casting intuition”). She made films on both side of the Pacific, in Cantonese, for the larger Chinese diaspora. She was openly gay at a time when few women were out, and won respect both in the film industry and the restaurant business. Born on the first year of WWI in San Francisco, she lived and made films through WWII and died in New York on the cusp of the 1970s. Yet, until the last few years, there was virtually no account of her life and work. Louisa Wei is an uncommon director: she teaches film theory while making films and writing books that investigate hidden corners of Chinese history, or the untold achievements of female directors. Golden Gate Girls is alluringly posited at the intersection of these fields: how women’s contribution to film history overlaps with the tumultuous History of the 20th century. Professor Wei taps onto her own trajectory as a diasporic Chinese woman (born in Shandong, educated in Canada, living a few years in Japan, working in Hong Kong) to try and re-create what it must have meant “to be Esther Eng.” Through her minute research and intuitive editing, Eng’s beautiful face looks back at us, forcing her to reconsider what we thought we knew; we decipher the subtle traces she left in the streets of San Francisco and New York; and, at moments, it seems that we hear her silenced voice whisper in our ears.

Gina Marchetti (Professor, Department of Comparative Literature, Hong Kong University):

Louisa Wei takes us on a journey of discovery in the footsteps of the remarkable Esther Eng, who defied gender expectations and racial hierarchies as an early Chinese American woman filmmaker. While investigating Eng’s screen career and personal life, Wei opens up the world of the Chinese diaspora in the interwar period to a greater appreciation of the role women played in the film industry. A woman pioneer in her own right, Wei provides a sensitive portrait of this intrepid, but largely neglected filmmaker who too easily fell through the cracks between Asian American and Chinese screen history.

Staci Ford (Hon Associate Lecturer, Department of History, Hong Kong University):

Golden Gate Girls is cultural history at its best. Esther Eng’s life is a transnational tale of connecting pasts and her films an understudied and (until now) unappreciated archive of transpacific flows. Louisa Wei’s formidable talents as a scholar/researcher and as director are lovingly poured into 90 minutes of lively and thoughtful recuperative biography. In addition to restoring Eng to her proper place in the history of film, US and transpacific history, Wei manages to tell several other stories that show how women’s networks have been shaping Hollywood as well as individuals and communities for decades.

Exhibition

  • 2021 Reborn: Women and Film Festival, sound installation of Golden Gate Girls and Havana Divas, curated by Mari Claire Shanghai, Shanghai
  • 2019 Images from Golden Gate Girls, Resist: be modern (again) exhibition, John Hansard Gallery, University of Southampton. May 25– Aug 17.

COMMERCIAL THEATRE SCREENINGS:

  • Broadway Film Center, Hong Kong, September 24-October 16, 2014

INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVALS:

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE/FORUM SCREENINGS:

DVD Information

Duration: 90 minutes | Aspect Ratio: 16:9 |

Language: Cantonese, English | Subtitles in Chinese & English

Watch Online

【kanopy】| North America

【Pay TV】| Hong Kong/Macau

【Cathay Play】 Bilingual Version  English version

DVD Ordering