Golden Gate Girls
(2024 Re-edited Version, 90 minutes)
Pioneering Voices: Women and Writers of Asian Heritage
Pioneering Voices: Women and Writers of Asian Heritage
Year: 2014
Duration: 01:29:26
Director: S. Louisa Wei
Highly Recommended by Women Film Pioneer Project, Columbia University; Women Make Movies, New York; Women Make Waves Interantional Film Festival, Taiwan; The One International Women’s Film Festival, China
Documentary filmmaker S. Louise Wei sheds much-needed light on a hidden piece of Hollywood, Hong Kong, women’s and AsianAmerican 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.
Elizabeth Kerr
Critic, The Hollywood Reporter
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 opened 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.
Gina Marchetti
Professor and Chairperson of the Humanities and Media Studies, Pratt University, New York
Synopsis:
Hong Kong’s first “directress” was a San Francisco native and an female chinese film maker. Esther Eng (1914-1970) was a true pioneer in many senses. She made 11 Cantonese language films—one in Hollywood, five in Hong Kong, three in California, one in Hawaii, and one in New York—all for Chinese audiences before, during and after WWII. She gave Bruce Leehis screen debut in his role as a baby girl in her 1941 film Golden Gate Girl. When production slowed in the 30s and 40s, she helped her father with his Chinese film import business and, later, ran theatres in New York that screened Chinese movies. While in New York City, she also opened at least four restaurants, including the Esther Eng Restaurant, a fine dining establishment frequented by celebrities like Malone Brando and Tennessee Williams. Following her death in 1970, her obituary appeared in both Variety magazine and the New York Times.
