Ming Wong’s research and experience from making Making Chinatown in Los Angeles in early 2012, led to the creation of After Chinatown. Triggered by the iconic last line of Polanski’s 1974 ‘neo-noir’ homage to film noir detective movies from the ’40s: “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown”, he found he couldn’t “forget it”. Instead, he embarked on a research journey into the legacy of ‘Chinatown’ as a cinematic symbol of despair, helplessness, lawlessness, etc.

He plays two characters, a detective and a femme fatale, both in disguise and adopting the look of classic film noir protagonists. The resulting video is in black and white, 4:3 format, and the soundtrack is composed of film noir theme music played backwards. The two figures are walking through what looks to be ‘Chinatown’, though the location keeps shifting between Los Angeles, San Francisco and Hong Kong. To shoot this, Wong retraced the journeys made by the early Chinese immigrants who travelled from Hong Kong to California. Both protagonists seem to be either searching for somebody, or running away from somebody; it is never made clear. It can be seen as an imagined narrative of men looking for their wives or daughters, or women looking for their fathers, husbands or sons, separated by time, geography, history and circumstance. It can also be a metaphor for running away from one’s past or searching for one’s identity, and reflects how we are all part of a continuum, linked by one’s destiny, history, geography, and culture.

Collection:
Singapore Art Museum, Singapore