Chan Is Missing

Two taxi drivers, an uncle and his nephew, entrusted the money for a joint business to a man named Chan. Chan has disappeared. The two start looking for him in San Francisco's Chinatown. Everyone they speak to tells them something different about Chan, and none of the accounts fit together. The subject is not the missing man but the absence of any single definition of Chinese American. The man they are looking for becomes a different person with each witness: traditional in one account, political in another, wholly Americanised in a third. The film never finds Chan and does not want to; what matters is the portrait of a community the search produces. The form takes the detective template and hollows it out. There are investigators, witnesses and clues, but no solution. The black and white image and the handheld camera deliberately withhold what the genre promises. It was made on a very small budget, on sixteen millimetre, in real locations. Wayne Wang's film is counted a turning point for Asian American cinema and was taken into the Library of Congress's national film registry. Until then this community had largely appeared on screen as background. Wood Moy and Marc Hayashi lead. Who it is for: viewers who like American independent cinema and films built on identity. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a solution; the film leaves its questions open on purpose.