The Snakehead (author: Patrick Radden Keefe)
This Friday dGenerate Films and the Museum of Chinese in American kick off their regular screening series Chinese Cinema Club. The first screening, held at the museum’s Chinatown location, will be Robin Weng‘s Fujian Blue, an exciting indie feature about reckless youths tied to the human smuggling trade in China’s Fujian province.
Joining us in post-screening discussion is Patrick Radden Keefe, author of The Snakehead: An Epic Tale of the Chinatown Underworld and the American Dream. It’s a fascinating book that digs deep into the smuggling of people from China to the US, an illegal practice which by the 1990s grew into a multi-billion dollar industry. Keefe will share his real-life observations of life and crime in Fujian, and also discuss how the “snakeheads” forever changed New York’s Chinatown.
Admission: $10/adult; $8/student & senior, Free for MOCA member. Visit the MoCA website for directions and details.
In 2006, Keefe published an eye-opening article in The New Yorker that eventually led him to write the book. Here’s a key excerpt:
This award-winning debut feature portrays two interweaving stories of youth crime and family crisis shed light on illegal emigration and human trafficking in China’s Fujian province.
