Far East Deep South is a 2020 American documentary film about a Chinese American family's journey to search for their family roots. Instead of leading them to the Far East to a remote village in China, it took them to the deep south into the small town of Cleveland in the Mississippi Delta.[
Baldwin Chiu and brother, Edwin, begin with the assumption that they are first generation Chinese Americans living in San Francisco. However, they find out their Chinese grandfather is buried in Mississippi. This new information leads the Chiu family on a voyage of discovery that will change forever the family they thought they knew. Their journey begins with one question. How did Chinese people end up in segregated Mississippi in the latter part of the 19th Century? Looming large in the documentary is the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which directly impacted Chiu's family. Chiu's grandfather and great grandfather served a predominately Black clientele and the documentary visits with Chinese American families who remained and some Black families who remember the store. Their stories of friendship and alliances contrast the Asian-Black conflicts of the Los Angeles Riots in 1992.
Far East Deep South had its world premiere at the Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival on March 6, 2020, winning the audience award for best documentary just as the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters forcing the film to go virtual the rest of 2020 and into 2021. The TV broadcast premiere was on PBS May 4, 2021 via World Channel's program America ReFramed. (From Wikipedia.)
This and all other compilations from the web are posted to the website of the Association for Barbados-China Friendship, ABCF-BB.com.
The ABCF mission is to build a deeper understanding between the Chinese people and Barbadians and Caribbean people from all walks of life. The association’s focus is on personal experiences, people-to-people contact, cultural exchanges and exchanges of ideas, and the facilitation of travel, business and study. From the outset we aim to learn from and build on the experiences of the Caribbean and China, and to develop mutual understandings and support that will be to the benefit of both sides.
