We are pleased to welcome writer/director Louisa Wei for a post- screening Q&A after the Fri 11 Oct screening of Golden Gate Girls.
S. Louisa Wei grew up in China’s Post Mao era where she studied science and engineering at university. She left China in 1992 to study literature and film in Canada.
Louisa began to make documentary films in 2003 while teaching film courses at City University of Hong Kong. Her oeuvre as a documentarian includes the short musical Cui Jian: Rocking China (2006) and the feature-length Storm under the Sun (2009), which received support from the competitive Jan Vrijman fund. An earlier version of Storm was shown at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam in 2007 and its final version premiered at Honk Kong International Film Festival in 2009.
Louisa began her extensive research on women directors from 2002 and published a book titled Women’s Film: Dialogue with Chinese and Japanese Women Directors in 2009. She first came across Esther Eng in 2001, but it was not until 2009 when Louisa uncovered 600 photos from Esther’s personal albums and photo. She then began to trace Esther’s life not only in English and Chinese journals, but also from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Honolulu and finally New York City. With partial funding from Hong Kong Art Development Council and support from City University of Hong Kong, Louisa completed Golden Gate Girls in 2013. Elizabeth Kerr of The Hollywood Reporter called the work “enlightening” writing that, “documentary filmmaker S. Louisa Wei sheds some much-needed light on a hidden piece of Hollywood, Hong Kong, women’s and Asian-American film history.”