Dreaming against the World: Mu Xin in Focus, U.S., 2014, 35 mins, and Forever, Chinatown, U.S., 2016, 32 min.



Studies and Stories of Exile is a documentary film series taking place over three Fridays in September and October, which explores the concept of exile in a geographically broad and thematically subtle sense. Considering the term’s Latin root, exilium, meaning banishment, the selected films question the slippage in terminology that has taken place in contemporary political debate, and they demand that we examine the true meanings of terms such as “exile,” “refugeeism,” “internally displaced person,” and “immigrant.” As the directors of these films show, exile can be political, professional, personal, familial, or cultural. This film series is part of the Malbin Program Series: Studies and Stories of Exile, and is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Artists in Exile: Expressions of Loss and Hope. Generously sponsored by the Lydia Winston Malbin Fund.



The shorts Dreaming against the World and Forever, Chinatown are complementary portraits of the careers of two very different artists: the professionally educated and internationally respected Chinese activist and painter Mu Xin and the unknown, self-taught Chinese-American miniature maker Frank Wong. Dreaming against the World is a moving portrait of Mu Xin, a man whose passion for art inspired him to survive imprisonment and persecution for the sake of beauty. Forever, Chinatown is a lyrical, nostalgic ode to San Francisco’s disappearing Chinatown community, the cultural memory of which Wong is trying to preserve with his miniature, three-dimensional dioramas. Together, the films illuminate two vastly different facets of the Chinese experience in the second half of the 20th century.