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SIGHT
A life of hard work with bountiful rewards of
love and respect
By Dr Jeannie Yi
Executive producer of Family Film & TV Awards on CBS (
1/27/2024)
If we stay home, our world is our family; If we travel out,
our world is our community. On May 24th, the movie goers
with whom I watched SIGHT are my world and my family. That
day, we came together with one thing in common: to celebrate
SIGHT to be released and shown in AMC theaters across
America and Canada in 2100 theaters.
That was a good day for a good cause to be celebrated!
With my friends old and young from Flushing, New York and
Florida, 400 of us came early to AMC theater atTime Square
with banners and posters. We had booked 4 showings and we
could watch the movie from morning till night, from 12 noon
till 7:30pm exactly.
The youngest audience is 2 months old! The oldest is 81!
Some were dressed up like going to the Broadway show down
the street. The general feeling was like celebrating Chinese
New Year. Undeniably we all worked hard, and with community
support we have collectively put the film into the theater!
We -New Yorkers - started the first two of Sight National
Tour of watching SIGHT from Dr. Wang’s laptop a year ago.
We are proud to see our hard work paid off and our stories
heard and seen nationally.
This is not only Dr. Wang’s story. It is our story.
Our story is told through SIGHT.
This is a victory, a victory of unification and hard work of
likeminded people working on one thing for one purpose: have
our story heard. We are proud to be Chinese. We are proud
to be Americans. And we have worked hard for years just to
achieve that !
We had intention to text to all of our Chinese relatives,
friends, partners, and fellow Americans as well as our
second generation born and bred in America the feelings we
experience while watching our stories played out on a large
screen. To watch SIGHT from Dr. Wang’s laptop in Flushing
community center is definitely different from watching it in
AMC Time Square Empire 25.
Everything was made bigger and better.
SIGHT is our story. Our story deserves to be shown in AMC.
The protagonist Dr Wang Mingxu is one of the first batch of
the Chinese overseas students coming to America for their
higher education in the early years of China's reform and
opening up in the 1980s. Overcoming all difficulties,
including language barriers and inherent prejudices, Dr
Wang, based on whose autobiography the movie was made,
became extremely successful.
If you don't understand what is called the Chinese dream and
the American dream, and “you have me in you and I have you
in me” concept, watching this movie will surely make you
understand what is called “integrated culture “ and how it
benefits the new immigrants with their drive and
determination to lead a life of promise and fulfillment
through hard work and faith in God.
Precisely through the juxtaposition of hard work and
“melting pot” diversity, supported by a sense of gratitude
and social responsibility, Dr. Wang achieved amazing success
from rags to riches to being a truly inspirational of our
time. Having obtained a dual PhDs- PhD from Harvard in
Medicine and PhD from MIT in Physics- Dr Wang won great
respect and admiration not in the medical community but
through all walks of life for his world renown technology
breakthrough to cure and restore sight to the blind, and for
his generosity to have donated that technology for the world
to freely use, the result of which are millions who were
cured and could see light after darkness.
SIGHT, first of all, is a story of a laborer. Everything
that Dr. Wang Mingxu has obtained today is not "given”;
everything was worked for, long and hard, a lonely journey
with huge sacrifice and final salvation. SIGHT, a 90-minute
movie spares nothing of such hardship from childhood onward.
The movie begins with the great result of the hard work: Dr.
Wang has invented the amniotic membrane technology, the
world's first laser technology to cure the blind (Baidu:
Chinese femtosecond laser expert in the US FDA committee),
and he has successfully healed the eyes of a man who has not
seen his wife for 13 years. Imagine 13 years! For 13 years,
his world was dark and lonely, deprived of his wife’s face
and smiles, a world without sunshine, but a total darkness.
Shortly after, however, audiences learn that genius and hard
work alone are not enough. Doctor Wang fails in his
operation to cure little Kajia from Calcutta, who had been
blinded intentionally by her stepmother, for allegedly blind
orphans who can sing are better beggars. Kajia was blinded
but she could not sing. She was left to die when the
missionaries found her.
The two scenes, from Dr. Wang standing on the wide and
bright marble stairs with his hands proudly folded in front
of him, announcing with a smile to the reporters about the
successful operation, to the second scene of meeting the
reporters briefing them of the failed operation and quickly
running downstairs, as if to escape from the scene, are two
parts of one life. These two scenes must be connected.
The brilliance of the movie is to have the audience see and
experience the double journey Dr. Wang has to take unawares
to him. On the way to cure Kajia, Dr Wang begins a journey
to heal the inner wounds he had suffered since his
childhood, a mental scar invisible to the eye.
90 minutes went by.
When I saw my daughter, who was born and raised in America,
cry, I thanked Dr. Wang and Sight for bringing my family
closer together. In 90 minutes SIGHT did what I could not
for a dozen years! In Dr. Wang's story, my daughter sees the
glimpse of her mother's childhood for real!
My generation, mine and Dr. Wang’s , growing up in the 60s,
there wasn’t education available to us due to the 10-year
cultural revolution. Lot of us really didn’t have enough to
eat, everything was rationed, sometimes we even had to go to
bed with an empty stomach, counting stars unable to sleep
wondering where the next meal would be……。
But none of us gave up.
We worked hard and we created a life we chose. And we chose
to be decent, successful, responsible and joyful.
We choose to be good citizens, good neighbors, good parents
and good friends.
Like Dr Wang I came to America in the early 80S for my PhD.
Through hard work and hope and faith, we become who we are
today: proud Chinese living in a proud country called
America.
SIGHT has led the way. Let’s follow in the company of
friends and family, with music and dance... for a better
and kinder world tomorrow.
Lastly, I must thank David Fisher the producer who met Dr.
Wang in 2004. He immediately decided to produce the movie.
And he did, inspire of the pandemic and all the hurdles.
“This is for my Chinese grandmother too. I always wanted to
do something in her honor,” said David when we met at the
Oscar screening evening on May 25, day after the movie’s
grand opening.
Terry Chen, who made Dr Wang alive on the big screen, is
truly recommendable for his professionalism! Terry, born in
Vancouver, Canada, with a British accent, must portray Dr
Wang as real as possible- Dr Wang is alive and people will
compare the differences and similarities. In six weeks
working with Dr. Wang, Terry for instance had changed his
intonation to comply with Dr. Wang’s way of talking,
controlled on the surface but quietly passionate underneath.
“I hope I have done a good job,” smiled Terry amicably.
He did! The world would agree! |