Eelyn Lee Awarded New Film Commission
Delighted to announce that Eelyn Lee has been awarded a commission from Chinese Art Now [CAN] to realise her new film project, Casting Fu Manchu. Eelyn's project is one of six new CAN Digital Commissions that will premiere later this year in the lead up to the CAN Festival in February 2021.
Casting Fu Manchu is an exploration of Yellow Peril in light of COVID-19. In 1912, when Sax Rohmer invented his character Dr. Fu Manchu - the evil Chinese doctor set on world domination - Yellow Peril was rife. Often painted as a faceless existential threat to the ‘western world’, East Asians were seen as a force that needed to be suppressed. With successive white actors applying Yellow Face to play the fictional villain, including Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, Eelyn’s film will subvert these racist tropes through re-imagining Fu Manchu in 2021.
“.. With a spike in attacks towards east and S.E. Asian people, and Donald Trump calling COVID-19 the ‘Chinese Virus’, Casting Fu Manchu will speak to that racism. It’s a racism that’s entrenched - just ask any Chinese actor working in the ‘west’ how many roles they don’t get offered. So, I’m looking forward to working with actors of east and S.E. Asian heritage - young, old, male, female or non-binary - to reinvent the character of Fu Manchu..” - Eelyn Lee
Press Release here.
Image Credit: Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu, 1932
