Forbidden City, U.S.A. DVD Debuts on November 12:
Documentary remembers the "Chinese Cotton Club" that inspired Flower Drum Song

By Scanews staff

	Arthur Dong's Forbidden City, U.S.A. debuts in a DVD Collector's Edition on November 12. This special release is packed with over 20 minutes of never before seen footage and a fabulous collection of more than 200 pieces of memorabilia and photographs. Extra features include: Performance Outtakes, 1940s Promotional Film, Full Color Bonus Featurette, Additional Interviews, Gallery of Entertainers, Scrapbook of Memorabilia, 8-page Color Booklet, Historical Essay, Production Notes, Reading List...and a few surprises!

	Home video copies of the DVD Collector's Edition are $39.95. VHS home video copies without the extra features are $19.95. These specially priced copies are licensed for private and personal home use only and not for any type of educational, institutional, community and/or public use whatsoever. Please call 800/343-5430 or email tmcndy@aol.com to place your personal home video orders.


Forbidden City, USA (1989, 16mm, 56 minutes, English, color & black/white) - 
Best Documentary of the Decade (shared award) - Hawaii International Film Festival

	It was the swinging 30s. The big bands of the 40s. It was San Francisco night life -- Baghdad by the Bay. And the crowds were packing the nation's premiere all-Chinese nightclub, Forbidden City. Like the Cotton Club of Harlem which featured America's finest African American entertainers, Forbidden City gained an international reputation with its unique showcase of Chinese American performers in eye-popping all-American extravaganzas. 

	Part That's Entertainment and part PBS, Forbidden City, U.S.A. captures this little-known chapter of entertainment history and takes it center stage, featuring a cast of original nightclub performers. "The Chinese Sinatra", "the Chinese Sophie Tucker", and the "Chinese Sally Rand" are just some of the spirited personalities that strut their stuff and share triumphant and often side-splitting tales of adventures in the cabarets of yesteryear.

	Everyone knew about Chinese laundries and cooks. But a Chinese tap dancer? A Chinese jazz crooner? And for a Chinese girl to bare her legs in public? It was considered immoral by elders in the culturally isolated Chinatowns of the 1930s-40s. 

Forbidden City, U.S.A. looks beyond the cartoon characters of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Broadway musical, Flower Drum Song (which was loosely based on the Forbidden City nightclub), to show a generation of Asian American pioneers who fought cultural barriers and racism to pursue their love of American song and dance. For the first time ever, original recordings and film performances long buried in studio vaults and private collections are highlighted alongside real life stories in this groundbreaking film. 

From ballroom dancers to bubble dancers, from "Some of These Days" to "How High the Moon," it's all here...with a new slant!