Years before Wayne Wang directed his groundbreaking adaptation of Amy Tan’s“The Joy Luck Club,”he made a low-budget drama, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart.”

Like“Joy Luck,”it is a quietly moving story about the Asian American experience in San Francisco, specifically the conflict between an immigrant older generation and their Americanized children.

Shot in the mid-1980s, when immigrant families were moving out of Chinatown and into “the avenues” of the Richmond and Sunset districts en masse, “Dim Sum” centers on a daughter in her 30s (Laureen Chew) feeling pressure from her aging mother (Chew’s real-life mother Kim Chew), an immigrant from Hong Kong, to marry.

It was achange of gears for Wang, whose previous film was his impressive debut, the Chinatown cabdriver noir “Chan Is Missing.” Inspired by the quiet family dramas of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, “Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart” was shot primarily in the Richmond District — in the Chew family’s actual home — and Chinatown, where the daughter’s uncle (Victor Wong) works as a bartender at Li Po.

Wang, who will be the film honoree at the Berkeley Art Museum’s Art + Film Benefit in March, supervised a restoration of the film in a new director’s cut edition for San Francisco distributor Strand Releasing and the Criterion Collection, which released it Tuesday, Aug. 15, on Blu-ray and DVD.

Wang spoke to the Chronicle from his Russian Hill home.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: “Dim Sum” almost seems like a dry run for “The Joy Luck Club,” although of course Amy Tan had not yet written that novel.

A:我肯定会这样说。实际上,原来l (script) of “Dim Sum” had four different women in it, like “Joy Luck Club.” But I couldn’t pull together four different stories at the same time, and I ended up deciding to focus on Laureen and her mother’s story. For the director’s cut, I put back in one scene where (the four women) barbecue together.

Q: You were in your 30s when you made this, so naturally the younger generation in “Dim Sum” seems authentic. But you also connected wonderfully with the older generation in this story. Now that you’re 74, do you feel you got it right?

A:Laureen and I were friends, and I was going through emotionally what she was going through with her mother (in the film). But now I see it also from the mother’s point of view, because I’m over 70 and I can feel, you know, there’s not a whole lot of time left. So what do I need to do or complete? That’s basically where the mother is coming from.

Q: Laureen’s mother was not an actress. How did you draw such a lovely performance from her?

A:She played herself. She ran a child care center in the morning, so upstairs when we were setting up, she was taking care of kids, and then she cooked meals for us. I’ve never heard of a production where one of the actors would cook dinner or cook lunch for us!

The script was written by Terrel Seltzer (who co-wrote the 1996 George Clooney-Michelle Pfeiffer romance “One Fine Day”) and myself, and we actually did the script by going to the Chews’ house and sitting down with them, giving them different situations such as the dinner scenes, and they would simulate that scene and we would record it. So in that sense, it’s kind of a documentary.

Q: The Chinese American experience in San Francisco has changed since the 1980s. If you made this film today, what differences would there be?

A:When we made that film, Chinatown people were beginning to leave Chinatown because it was basically a ghetto for older people or very poor people. So a lot of families were going out to the Richmond and to the Sunset and buying houses and starting a different life there. Now in many ways they have sort of taken over the Richmond, and it’s no longer something new.

Also, the whole theme of a parent putting pressure on their kids to get married is not as prevalent as before, although I still hear about some cases.

Q: How has San Francisco in general changed since the ’80s?

A:I think that the San Francisco I used to know, especially the Tenderloin/Union Square downtown business area, is really different. The suburbs have stayed pretty much the way it was.

I would say San Francisco is more vibrant and more mixed culturally and ethnically, which is good. But it’s mostly the downtown part that’s really changed and really kind of upsetting for me.

Q: How about Chinatown?

A:There’s a mixture of different kinds of money and people. I see a lot of IT guys, younger guys from different ethnic groups moving into Chinatown because the rent is cheap and the restaurants have become a little more contemporary. Also, the old shops are finally closing down. Some of them I miss, but most of them I don’t — selling all these old, you know, touristy gadgets and whatnot. But these days, they’re being a little more creative and trying to do something a little different within, and that’s what it needs.

Reach G. Allen Johnson:ajohnson@sfchronicle.com