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| Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco: Chinatown: Production Biographies |
[Editor's Note: Please note that the following material dates from the PBS premiere in July 1997]
Felicia Lowe, PRODUCER/DIRECTOR
Felicia Lowe is one of America's notable independent Chinese American filmmakers. Currently, Lowe is developing her first dramatic, feature length film, an adaptation of the novel, "Child of the Owl" by Laurence Yep.
In 1988, Lowe released "Carved in Silence", which uses historical materials and dramatic re-creations to tell the story of Chinese immigrants detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. Among other awards, "Carved in Silence" received a CINE Golden Eagle, A Chris Plaque, and an Honorable Mention by the National Educational Film and Video Association. The program was selected for exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C., the Hong Kong International Film Festival, and other film festivals in the United States and abroad.
In 1980, she received an Emmy nomination, a CINE Golden Eagle, and an American Film Festival Red Ribbon Award for "China: Land of My Father." The film chronicles her trip to her father's homeland and an emotional meeting with her grandmother and other relatives whom she hand never met.
Felicia Lowe began her career as a broadcast journalist, working in both commercial and public television, where her work as a writer, producer, director, and reporter won numerous awards. Among her many credits, she was a reporter for KGO-TV News and a field producer for "Turnabout," the Emmy Award-winning PBS series on women's issues produced for KQED Channel 9.
Lowe has taught film production and advanced scriptwriting to graduate students at Stanford University and San Francisco State University. She is a graduate of the Michelle Clark Fellowship Program in Broadcast Journalism at Columbia University in New York, and San Jose State University.
Peter L. Stein, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER
Peter L. Stein served as executive producer for national production at KQED. His production credits include "Green Means," two series of short documentary profiles of environmental success stories (winner of the Silver Apple from the National Educational Film & Video Festival), "Today's Gourmet" with Jacques Pepin, three popular 26-part cooking series (winner of the James Beard Award for Best Culinary Video), and "The De' Medici Kitchen," 13 episodes plus a one-hour documentary on the food and culture of Italy. He is responsible for production of KQED's ongoing series Neighborhoods: The Hidden Cities of San Francisco. The first program in the series, "The Mission," premiered in December 1994 and was subsequently nominated for three local Emmys. Stein wrote and produced "The Castro," the third program in the Neighborhood series, which premiered in San Francisco in March 1997, also aired later that year on public television stations nationally.
Prior to his work at KQED, Stein received a Northern California Emmy Award for one of more than 120 hours of television talk shows he produced for KPIX-TV. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard University.
Genny Lim, POET
Genny Lim's poetry and performance are interwoven throughout KQED's profile of "Chinatown." Lim's poetry of growing up bicultural and bilingual in Chinatown offers deep, personal insight into an emotional subtext of the neighborhood. Lim is a native San Francisco poet, performer, playwright, and creator of multi-art theatre pieces. Her first play, "Paper Angels," was produced in San Francisco, Seattle and New York, and aired on PBS' American Playhouse in 1985. "Paper Angels" recreates life on Angel Island, where most of the Chinese who came to America between 1910 and 1940 were held for interviews and examinations. Her second play, "Bitter Cane," examines the plantation experience in Hawaii. Lim is also co-author of the American Book Award winning Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940, and a collection of poems, Winter Place. She currently teaches in the Humanities Program at New College of California.
Charlie Chin, NARRATOR
Charlie Chin is a multi-talented performer, composer, writer and teacher. An accomplished musician on several instruments, he has recorded two albums, A Grain of Sand and Back to Back, which sample Asian American songs and music. As a playwright, his works include A.B.C., American Born Chinese; The Last Spirit Boxer; 10,000 Stories of Chinatown; and Sex Love and Marriage. His book Hua Mu Lan, China's Bravest Girl, was published in 1993 by Children's Book Press. A collector and interpreter of Chinese and Chinese American folktales, Chin is a frequent consultant on Asian American communities for the Smithsonian Office of Folk Life and Folkways, and a member of the American Folklore Society.
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