Many Moons

Charlie Moon’s mythology precedes him: his image and name live on as the “last Chinese Man of Humboldt County” after its mass expulsion of 1885– and his descendents, known as the Moons, touch all local native tribes in the area. But were there others who survived?

With the help of Yurok, Hupa, and Chinese American residents– and framed by archival remnants– Many Moons investigates the ghostly marks left on a landscape repurposed for settlement. As a ghost responds, a missing persons case becomes an interrogation of history-making as Asian community members breathe life back into gaps in the archive.

In the county which once boasted it was “free of Chinamen,” Chinese community members search for those who may have survived Humboldt's 1885 expulsion and 60 years of enforced exclusion– the only known survivor being Charlie Moon, whose descendants are Native tribal members. Framed by the words of a ghost, this hybrid documentary/fiction film alternates between the observational search for ‘the others’ with the appearance of ghosts as the past demands recognition in the present.