Shining a light on a Chinese-American female film pioneer

The name Esther Eng may not ring a bell with many people, even Chinese film buffs, but S. Louisa Wei is determined to remedy this situation with Golden Gate, Silver Light, her documentary about the pioneering Chinese-American filmmaker that is making its world premiere at this year's Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Wei has been fascinated with the subject of women filmmakers since, at the age of 15, she viewed the 1985 debut film of Hu Mei, the leading female figure among the mainland's Fifth Generation of directors. Army Nurse focuses on the life and love of its 15-year-old protagonist, who works as an army nurse until her retirement decades later.

"As a teenager, seeing this film moved me a lot and it was very inspiring because it spoke from a girl's point of view," Wei recalls in her office at City University.

Hu's film differed from other films she had seen, but she couldn't explain how female directors made films in a "slightly different film language" until years later, when she pursued a comparative literature - film studies PhD at the University of Alberta.

Now an associate professor with the City University of Hong Kong's school of creative media as well as a documentary filmmaker and writer, Wei's academic publications include a book (co-authored with Y. Yang) on Women's Cinema: Dialogues with Chinese and Japanese Female Directors (2009) that features 27 interviews with directors such as Hong Kong's Mabel Cheung Yuen-ting, Barbara Wong Chun-chun and Aubrey Lam Oi-wah.

Wei says a male colleague once told her that he felt female filmmakers always made things differently, which made it hard to include them when looking at trends in mainstream film history.