Artwork by Kani Releasing
Mabel Cheung’s debut unfolds as the quintessential American story: that of the “illegal” immigrant trying their best to survive in the so-called land of the free. After a raid on a Canal Street garment factory leaves Cheung (Ching Yong-Cho) targeted by immigration agents, the mainland refugee resorts to a sham marriage with a reluctant acquaintance to access a green card.Â
An NYU graduation project funded by Shaw Brothers Studio, Mabel Cheung’s The Illegal Immigrant was entirely shot on location in New York’s Chinatown in authentic gambling parlours and video stores, amidst real-life gangsters and undocumented immigrants cast as non-professional actors. This results in a remarkable encapsulation of a time and place that no longer exists; a comic tragedy that establishes, with unusual freedom, the foundations of what would become Mabel Cheung’s “immigration trilogy” a short few years later with the successes of An Autumn’s Tale (1987) and Eight Taels of Gold (1989).
Mabel Cheung’s debut unfolds as the quintessential American story: that of the “illegal” immigrant trying their best to survive in the so-called land of the free. After a raid on a Canal Street garment factory leaves Cheung (Ching Yong-Cho) targeted by immigration agents, the mainland refugee resorts to a sham marriage with a reluctant acquaintance to access a green card.Â
An NYU graduation project funded by Shaw Brothers Studio, Mabel Cheung’s The Illegal Immigrant was entirely shot on location in New York’s Chinatown in authentic gambling parlours and video stores, amidst real-life gangsters and undocumented immigrants cast as non-professional actors. This results in a remarkable encapsulation of a time and place that no longer exists; a comic tragedy that establishes, with unusual freedom, the foundations of what would become Mabel Cheung’s “immigration trilogy” a short few years later with the successes of An Autumn’s Tale (1987) and Eight Taels of Gold (1989).