Filmmaker Ruby Yang collaborated with the Chinese Performing Arts Foundation (CPAF) to produce footage for A Moment in Time, a one-hour documentary for PBS about Chinese performing arts, their relationship to the development of Chinese film, and the public following for both genres in San Francisco.
Ruby Yang grew up and went to school in Hong Kong. She trained as a painter at the San Francisco Art Institute and went on to earn a Master’s degree in filmmaking in 1984. She has directed several documentaries for public television and edited films for other artists. Among numerous awards, in 2006, she won an Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject for “The Blood of Yingzhou District.” Ruby Yang, director, and her husband Lambert Yam, the producer for A Moment in Time, had an intimate connection with the documentary’s topic. Lambert Yam managed the World Theatre, a movie house in San Francisco’s Chinatown, for ten years. There he witnessed the match between certain popular films and moments in Chinatown’s evolution as a community.
Chinese Performing Arts Foundation, has a long history of supporting Chinese traditional arts in the Bay Area. Its founder, David Lei, has been active on many fronts and brought the filmmakers in contact with scholarly research and interview subjects.