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Tuesday, 12 September 2017

We Need More Filmmakers Like Justin Lin to Explore Asian-Americana

By Sheryl Oh

Lin is back to his Asian-American underdog roots with his new Chinatown bank prosecution picture.

More than anything, 2017 has shown how bad habits in Hollywood can, in fact, be fractured. Perhaps it is dismissive to collectively term the systemic erasure of people of color from the big screen a “bad habit,” but what I mean by that is it’s easy to get lazy with the convenience of it. Even in this day and age, people see caricatures of certain demographics onscreen and either laugh or stay silent. The formula continues while marginalized communities endure.

But filmmakers increasingly set out with the express intent of representation and actors willingly vacate roles in the name of social justice. And thankfully, Deadline’s announcement that Justin Lin will be tackling the story of the Abacus Federal Savings Bank’s mortgage fraud prosecution fits right in alongside those instances of progress.

Lin is set to develop an adaptation of the Steve James documentary, Abacus: Small Enough to Jail. The film will, like the doc, focus on the Sung family’s small Chinatown-based bank and its fierce battle against the Manhattan District Attorney. It is a case of deep injustice, wherein a tiny local bank was the only institution prosecuted in the fallout of the 2008 financial crisis. The insultingly lenient treatment tendered to much larger banks for similar culpabilities on an enormous scale added salt to injury. Of the project, Lin states:

“This is a quintessential American story told from a point of view that is rarely seen on screen. The Sung family’s collective act of courage needs to be told, especially now.”

The article We Need More Filmmakers Like Justin Lin to Explore Asian-Americana appeared first on Film School Rejects.

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