STREET ANGEL (2020)
Part documentary, part fever dream, a wandering songstress discovers the unspoken onscreen and offscreen histories and realities of Los Angeles Chinatown as she sings an old movie tune to aging residents faced with a rapidly developing neighborhood.
Now streaming on Aeon:
Developed and directed by Michelle Sui, Street Angel follows a woman as she moves through Los Angeles Chinatown and its bus stops, street corners, gift shops, and art galleries, interacting with different passersby as she sings a refugee song from the 1937 Chinese film Street Angel. The aging immigrant residents she encounters listen to this familiar tune with utmost attention and are delighted and intrigued, creating an opening for conversation with an often overlooked group in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. Rarely voiced histories of Chinatown’s past––both onscreen as a backdrop for Hollywood movies and offscreen as a home for the displaced––reveal the pride and resilience of a community looking to an uncertain future.
This short documentary is fueled by the complex and rarely spoken history of displacement and role-playing in Los Angeles Chinatown alongside a visual experiment in reclaiming agency in the Oriental female archetype, a trope of strange delight and exoticism for much of cinematic history. Street Angel began in 2017 as a series of immersive pop-up solo performances by Michelle Sui in and around Chinatown, honoring and activating the spaces and histories here. The 2020 film is a culmination of these performances and conversations from the past three years, exploring the mirage of identity and reality in Los Angeles, a city forever locked in the liminal space between real and artifice.
Street Angel
A Nü House Production
Directed by Michelle Sui
Starring Michelle Sui, Eugene Moy, Jimmy Wong
Follow @streetangelfilm for screening updates and events