THE MAGICAL LIFE OF LONG TACK SAM

The Magical Life of Long Tack Sam is a very personal documentary film about director Anne Marie Fleming's great-grandfather Long Tack Sam, a handsome Chinese vaudeville magician who toured the world in the beginning of the twentieth century and shattered the Hollywood image of the Chinese as buck-toothed, Fu Manchu objects of ridicule. Fleming, an intrepid documentarian, uses animation to bring her great-grandfather to life, interspersing archival footage and interviews with members of her family and the community of magicians. By doing so, she manages to construct a fascinating and poignant film, that at once celebrates the life of her great-grandfather and, at the same time, muses about issues of memory, history and family. As Fleming notes in her closing credits, «everything is relatives».