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And the Community Will Rise

And the Community Will Rise embodies the significant role that residents and advocates for public housing play in ensuring the social, political, and cultural integrity of San Francisco in the face of the current housing crisis, gentrification and displacement threatening the city. Chinatown’s Ping Yuen buildings were the first high-rise public housing in the U.S. built in 1952, and provide crucial affordable housing for the community.

Chinatown Community Development Center, as well as other service and advocacy organizations, have provided the organizing base for Chinatown’s role as fertile ground for movements across issues such as affordable housing, exclusionary immigration policies, low wage workers’ rights, bilingual education, environmental justice, and the survival of community-based economies. Timing is crucial as San Francisco is witnessing growing evictions of low-income residents, and as neighborhoods inhabited for decades by generations of communities of color face displacement.
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Background

Ping Yuen, the first U.S. high-rise public housing, was built in 1952 as part of an affordable housing movement that prioritized the needs of veterans. By the late 1970s it had become a community struggling with underfunded repair and management, crime, violence, and a disconnection to city services and support. In 2014 San Francisco opted to use federal funds from Housing and Urban Development’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program as an opportunity to transfer public housing to developers and managers with community ties. Having decades-long work with Ping Yuen residents to protest poor conditions, Chinatown Community Development Center was selected to rehabilitate, transform, own and operate the Ping Yuen buildings long-term.

  • Lenora Lee
    Director
  • Lenora Lee
    Producer
  • SanSan Kwan
    Key Cast
  • Lynn Huang
    Key Cast
  • Johnny Huy Nguyen
    Key Cast
  • Clarissa Dyas
    Key Cast
  • Amber Julian
    Key Cast
  • Anna Greenberg Gold
    Key Cast
  • Gabriel Christian
    Key Cast
  • Chloe Luo
    Key Cast
  • Megan Lowe
    Key Cast
  • Melissa Lewis Wong
    Key Cast
  • YiTing Hsu
    Key Cast
  • Hien Huynh
    Key Cast
  • Francis Wong
    Composers
  • Tatsu Aoki
    Composers
  • Megan Lowe
    Composers
  • AK Black
    Vocalists
  • Megan Lowe
    Vocalists
  • Chloe Luo
    Vocalists
  • Helen Palma
    Vocalists
  • Kioto Aoki
    Musicians
  • Deszon X. Claiborne
    Musicians
  • Karl Evangelista
    Musicians
  • Michael Jamanis
    Musicians
  • Jamie Kempkers
    Musicians
  • Helen Palma
    Musicians
  • Melody Takata
    Musicians
  • Edward Wilkerson Jr.
    Musicians
  • Megan Lowe
    Musicians
  • Francis Wong
    Musicians
  • Tatsu Aoki
    Musicians
  • May Chung
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Bessie Louie
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Benson Toy
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Nancy Lim-Yee
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Bob Chan
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Julia LaChica
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • David Dea
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Norman Fong
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Jok Lee Chang
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Edwin Lee
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Gordon Chin
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Patricia Thomas
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Ying Zhuan Guan Yin
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Janice Marie Brown
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Sophia
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Myrisha Mixon
    Interviewees / Voiceover
  • Joel Wanek
    Color & Sound Correction, Digital Consultant
  • Lenora Lee
    Editing
  • Joel Wanek
    Editing
  • Lenora Lee
    Cinematography
  • Edward Kaikea Goo
    Cinematography
  • Shannon Preto
    Cinematography
  • Queenie Quan
    Cinematography
  • Aaron Gold
    Cinematography
  • Corey Chan
    Martial Arts Consultant
  • Yvonne Kong
    Chinese Translation
  • Jacinta Wu Goo
    Chinese Translation
  • Kenneth Eng
    Subtitles
  • Robbie Sweeny
    Photography
  • Erika Gee
    Chinatown Community Development Center Project Facilitators
  • Roy Chan
    Chinatown Community Development Center Project Facilitators
  • Lucy Tafler
    Lenora Lee Dance Project Consultant
  • Vinay Patel
    Asian Improv aRts Administrative Director
  • Johnny Huy Nguyen
    Asian Improv aRts Program Manager
  • Francis Wong
    Asian Improv aRts Co-Founder
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Feature
  • Genres:
    Dance
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 2 minutes 55 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 31, 2023
  • Production Budget:
    150,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English, Yue Chinese (Cantonese)
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Digital Cinema Package:
    Unavailable
  • CAAMFest 2023
    San Francisco
    United States
    May 14, 2023
    World Premiere
    Official Selection
  • Experimental, Dance & Music Festival 2023

    July 9, 2023
    Screening on-demand July 9-10, 2023
    Best Feature Film
Director Biography - Lenora Lee

LENORA LEE DANCE (company & director)

Lenora Lee Dance (LLD) integrates contemporary dance, film, music, and research and has gained increasing attention for its sustained pursuit of issues related to immigration, incarceration, global conflict, and its impacts, particularly on women and families. The company creates works that are both set in public and private spaces, intimate and at the same time large-scale, inspired by individual stories as well as community strength, at times crafted for the proscenium, or underwater, or in the air, and at times are site-responsive, immersive and interactive. For the last 15 years LLD has been pushing the envelope of large-scale multimedia, and immersive dance performance that connects various styles of movement and music to culture, history and human rights issues. Its work has grown to encompass the creation, presentation and screening of films, museum and gallery installations, civic engagement and educational programming.

The company is directed by San Francisco native Lenora Lee, who has been a dancer, choreographer and artistic director for the past 25 years in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. She has been an Artist Fellow at the de Young Museum, a Djerassi Resident Artist, a Visiting Scholar at New York University 2012-2016, an Artist in Residence at Dance Mission Theater, a 2019 United States Artists Fellow, artist in residence at Pao Arts Center and ArtsEmerson, and is the recipient of a New England Foundation for the Arts National Dance Project grant award. She is also Project Manager at Asian Improv aRts. www.LenoraLeeDance.com

CHINATOWN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CENTER

The Mission of the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC) is to build community and enhance the quality of life for San Francisco residents. We are a place-based community development organization serving primarily the Chinatown neighborhood, and also serve other areas including North Beach and the Tenderloin. We are a community development organization with many roles - as neighborhood advocates, organizers and planners, and as developers and managers of affordable housing. We believe in a comprehensive vision of community, a quality environment, a healthy neighborhood economy, and active voluntary associations. We are committed to the empowerment of low-income residents, diversity and coalition building, and social and economic justice. www.chinatowncdc.org

ASIAN IMPROV ARTS

Since 1987, Asian Improv aRts (AIR) builds a national cross-cultural community rooted in social justice and equity, advancing artists who create innovative artistic works representing the Asian American experience. Over its 35 years, AIR has produced more than 100 recordings of Asian American artists, chronicling a legacy of Asian artistic excellence in the U.S. It has mentored many artists in their early stages, some of whom are now luminaries in their field, such as Vijay Iyer and Jen Shyu. AIR is recognized and sustained for its vital contribution to the national conversation on race and social justice through the arts. www.asianimprov.org

SPECIAL THANKS

to Jamie Allison, Faiza Bukhari, Sondra Carter, Jennifer Chan, Roy Chan, Rosa Chen, Dominique Commer, Danishia Davis, Maggie Dong, Norman Fong, Erika Gee, Adriana Grino, Caitlyn He, Lynn Huang, SanSan Kwan, Tatjana Loh, Pamela Mattera, Rod Mitchell, Matthias Mormino, Johnny Huy Nguyen, David Ortega, Diana Pang, Frances Phillips, Ted Russell, Shelley Trott, Marquita Williams, Yin Yin Zhu, Chinese Culture Center, Chinese Historical Society of America Museum, Physique Magnifique

AND THE COMMUNITY WILL RISE IS MADE POSSIBLE

through a collaboration between Lenora Lee Dance, Asian Improv aRts, and Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC). It is supported in part by a grant from The Creative Work Fund, a program of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund that also is supported by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a Kenneth Rainin Foundation Open Spaces Program grant, California Arts Council Creative California Communities grant, by Asian Improv aRts, Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center, Chinatown Community Development Center, Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco Grants for the Arts, Zellerbach Family Foundation, and by Generous Individuals.

COPYRIGHT 2023 Lenora Lee Productions, LLC
www.LenoraLeeDance.com
@LenoraLeeDance

POWERED BY Asian Improv Nation

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

This film was created during the heart of the pandemic, March 2020 to January 2023, on Ramaytush-Ohlone land. We had many starts and stops, postponements and saw the original project shift from an immersive, multimedia dance performance in the Central Ping Yuen housing complex to the dance film you see here. Amongst shifting health mandates and collective uncertainties, we prioritized the safety of the residents, staff, and dancers over adherence to the original project design.

Many of us experienced our most trying times. We lost family members, colleagues, and friends. We also witnessed and became part of a racial reckoning, the Black Lives Matter movement, Stop Asian Hate, amongst the increase in anti-Asian violence. The racial and economic injustices of this country magnified and amplified.

As we continue to fight against the legacies of settler colonialism and racial capitalism, the residents of Ping Yuen are reminders to the power of community. A reminder that amidst the narratives that seek to divide us, there is so much more that unites us if we take the time to listen and understand each other, that so much more is possible when we come together. Because against all odds, the community will always rise.

Lenora Lee