Optimized "The Fall of the I-Hotel" at the Los Angeles Asian American Pacific Film Festival

Manilatown Heritage Foundation
announces

Optimized "The Fall of the I-Hotel"
to screen at the
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

In Person:
Friday, May 5th at 8:30pm
Japanese American National Museum
100 N. Central Avenue, Los Angeles

Virtually via the Eventive Virtual Cinema:
Monday, May 8th and Tuesday, May 9th

The Manilatown Heritage Foundation presents a new restoration and enhancement of the iconic 1983 documentary, "The Fall of the I-Hotel". This film has been lovingly re-scanned at 4K from a pristine 16mm print and finished at 2K under the supervision of filmmaker Curtis Choy.  

Please join Manilatown when the enhanced and newly subtitled film makes its California premiere at the Los Angeles Asian American Pacific Film Festival on Friday, May 5th at 8:30pm. The screening will take place in Little Tokyo at Aratani Hall, Japanese American National Museum, 100 N. Central Avenue, Los Angeles. 

And for those of you who join us in Los Angeles please join us for for its virtual run on Monday, May 8th and Tuesday, May 9th.

Tickets are now available online: https://festival.vcmedia.org/ 2023/movies/the-fall-of-the-i- hotel/

After a decade of spirited resistance to the razing of Manilatown, the battle for housing in San Francisco ends in the brutal eviction of the elderly tenants of the International Hotel. "The Fall of the I-Hotel" serves as the witness to the community's fight to survive, and as a tribute to the dignity and strength of the “Manongs”, or elderly tenants of the hotel. Viewed continuously by students of Asian American Studies since its original release in 1983, "The Fall of the I-Hotel" not only documents the struggle to save the I-Hotel, it also provides an overview of Filipino American history. This is not just a story about old men in an old building, but of multiple tragedies: ethnic communities redeveloped out of existence, housing gobbled up by realtors, the shabby treatment of the elderly, and the betrayal of American ideals learned in the Philippines by its American pioneers.

This is a restored and optimized version of the iconic "The Fall of the I-Hotel" documentary by Curtis Choy about a historic event that continues to be important to the San Francisco Bay Area and the Asian Pacific Islander communities. The Manilatown Heritage Foundation, which honors the legacy of the I-Hotel and Historic Manilatown at San Francisco’s International Hotel Manilatown Center, restored and optimized the 16mm print in collaboration with the UCLA Asian American Studies Archive. Restoration, optimization and a 4K digitization of the most pristine 16mm copy of the film was completed by FotoKem so that the best possible format could be preserved and viewed by the public.

Partial funding for "The Fall of the I-Hotel" Restoration Project has been provided by the Andrew Mellon Foundation.
For more information about the Restoration Project or about the Manilatown Heritage Foundation please contact us at: mhf@manilatown.org