We are pleased to present Luka YuanYuan Yang's Tales of Chinatown in this year's Art Basel Short Film programme, External History. Curated by multi-media artist and film producer Li Zhenhua, External History brings together three short films by Asian women artists that tackle histories, both private and public, in a discursive way.

Tales of Chinatown opens with a captivating walking tour of San Francisco's Chinatown. It traces the path of Orson Welles' 1940s film The Lady from Shanghai, starting from the last surviving theater in Chinatown. The journey then takes us from "Shanghai Low" to the "Forbidden City Nightclub". Along the way, the camera intimately follows Chinese dancer Cynthia Yee, historian Wylie Wong, and David Lei, weaving a narrative that transcends time and space.

Since 2018, Luka YuanYuan Yang (b 1989, Beijing) has been delving into the stories of Chinese women in the 20th-century performing arts industry abroad. She skillfully illuminates the memories and scars left by the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943), shedding light on the experiences of Chinese immigrants and their descendants throughout the 20th century.

Tales of Chinatown