“It was about doing something with the vacant lot that was more than just letting it fill with trash,” Sam Davol, 41, said of the festival, which will be held from Aug. 25 to Aug. 28 this year.
To create the film festival, the Davols worked with Jeremy Liu, then-executive director of the Asian Community Development Corporation, who introduced them to Jean Lukitsh, a scholar and critic of Chinese films who had worked as a projectionist in two Chinatown movie theaters in the 1970s and 1980s.
The neighborhood once had three movie theaters — the China Cinema, the Pagoda, and the Star Cinema — until the home-video revolution made them unprofitable and all three closed their doors.
“[Liu] had met me through some mutual friends,” Lukitsh recalled, “and we had talked about how wonderful Chinese movies were, and how great it was that Chinatown used to have these movie theaters and how sad it was that they were no longer there.”
So when Liu met the Davols and learned they were anxious to do something for the community, he suggested putting together a film series with sponsorship by ACDC and introduced them to Lukitsh.
“It just sort of came together very naturally, very smoothly that first year,” Lukitsh recalled. “It was like, ’Yeah, what a great idea. Let’s just do it. Hey kids, let’s put on a show.’”
Davol said the annual festival draws many Chinatown residents and people of Chinese heritage but also people who live in other parts of downtown, people who are enthusiastic about the idea of “pop-up” events in otherwise unused urban spaces, and people who love kung fu and Chinese films.
“That’s kind of the value I see of this kind of event,” he said. “It really isn’t just for Chinatown. It’s a very urban event in a way, and gets a mix of people from all over Boston.”
