Many Moons, 2023, 21:46 minutes. Directed by Chisato Hughes.
Film Screening Saturday August 31, 6-8pm
This is a free event but space is limited so you must reserve a seat in advance.
Charlie Moon’s mythology precedes him: his image and name live on as the “last Chinese Man of Humboldt County” and his descendants, known as the Moons, touch all local native tribes in the area. But were there others who survived? With the help of Yurok, Hupa, and Chinese American residents– and framed by archival remnants– "Many Moons" investigates the ghostly marks left on a landscape repurposed for settlement. As a ghost responds, a missing persons case becomes an interrogation of history-making as Asian community members breathe life back into gaps in the archive.
Artist Statement:
Growing up in Humboldt County, I didn’t learn of its Chinese expulsions until I returned as an adult. Instead, I grew up in the profound silence that comes from erasure– a quiet that is custom for many rural white towns in America whose complex historical legacies have been forgotten, buried, obscured. “Many Moons” has been a personal investment to make sense of the land through the lens of its history of ethnic cleansings, discrimination, and dispossession.
Rather than replicate the conventions of traditional documentary for establishing an authoritative narrative (talking heads, didactics, or voice-over) I wished for the audience to peel back layers in real time– meeting friends and acquaintances in community, learning more about Humboldt, combing through the archive with a cast of characters, working to solve the “mystery” surrounding the figure of Charlie Moon until realizing, like me, they were asking the wrong questions. I wanted to make the unwieldiness of archival research visible by including primary sources so that a viewer could see the mistakes, mispellings, and omissions themselves. It was important to me to de-center my own voice as the sole author with the interventions of an unnamed ghost– the spirit in the Charlie Moon photo– to serve as the decolonial narration of the film.
Chisato Hughes is a filmmaker working in experimental and speculative forms. Their film, "Many Moons,” asks questions about ghosts and placemaking today– looking at the history of the expulsions in Humboldt County, where they grew up, and the Chinese people who continued to live in the county despite the threat of white violence. "Many Moons," premiered at CAAMFest and has since acquired distribution with Third World Newsreel for this coming fall. Chisa's work has been shown at UC Santa Cruz's Sesnon Gallery and Institute for the Arts and Sciences, SF Moma, and at UCLA's Film and Television Archive at the Hammer Museum.
This is a free event but space is limited so you must reserve a seat in advance.
