Screening

About The Arch

Year Released:

1968

Format:

35mm

Genres:

Drama

Metadata:

Directed by Shu Shuen Tong

This stylized Qing dynasty melodrama centers on a wealthy widow on the eve of introducing a new monument (an arch) to be erected in her honor. She has feelings for a young man that she must suppress to protect her virtue and daughter’s honor. Directed by a trail-blazing female filmmaker, shot by Satyajit Ray’s cinematographer, Subrata Mitra, and co-edited by Les Blank, The Arch is considered the first Chinese art film and a precursor to the New Wave Hong Kong films of the ’70s and ’80s. In Mandarin with English subtitles. Introduction by Filmmaker Evans Chan. DCP provided by Hong Kong Film Archive, Leisure and Cultural Services Department. (2K DCP Presentation)

Evans Chan

Born in China and raised in Hong Kong, Evans Yiu Shing Chan is a critic, dramatist, and award-winning film director. Chan has been compared to the avant-garde filmmaker Chris Marker, “the most intellectual of the current crop of Hong Kong directors,” wrote Barry Long in Hong Kong Babylon. He is also a program consultant to New York’s Downtown Pace Arts Centre, a veteran cultural critic, and former advisor to the Hong Kong International Film Festival. Chan has written for the Indian-based film journal Cinemaya and The Hong Kong Standard, where he was the staff film critic from 1981 to 1984. Since 1984, Chan has divided his time between New York and Hong Kong.