Dallas Videofest 2009 - Chinese Ghost Story

29 min.

The retelling of Pu Songling's (1640-1715) 'Kon-Sun-Ju-Liang' sets the counterpoint for this tale of the 1869 Transcontinental Railroad. Throughout the American West, we searched for those absent from the 19th century A.J. Russell photograph documenting the joining together of the eastern and western United States. The 17th century Chinese ghost tale placed alongside a retelling of the Chinese participation in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad establishes two parallel tracks, intersecting at the horizon of one immigrant's story of his sixty-year separation from his family in the mainland. All such stories coincide with the empty and mute western landscapes of settlements and trails indicating, finally, that there are no stories without places, and places are largely silent to what occurs. That silence is palatable in this ghost story. It is estimated that between 1864 and 1867, 23,000 Chinese laborers worked for the Central Pacific Railroad and more than 1,300 Chinese perished during the construction of the western route of the Transcontinental Railroad. While the remains of many Chinese laborers were eventually shipped home, others lie in unmarked graves throughout the American West. Gold, the Oregon Trail, ghost settlements, dioramas, and historical enactors are implicated in the vistas and in those empty panoramas where a history is written in the soil--the history of 23,000 Chinese who were responsible for connecting a continent and who lost their names in the process. Chinese Ghost Story is a poetic essay in which history and landscape converge along the undisturbed railroad grade.

Information from the festival's website