Marc Hayashi in Wayne Wang’s “Chan Is Missing” (1982). Credit: Courtesy of Koch Lorber Films

When Wayne Wang was scrambling around the streets of Chinatown in the early 1980s shooting his indie feature “Chan Is Missing,” trying to stretch the most out of the $22,000 he’d scrounged together to make it, even he couldn’t guess that he was making a landmark movie. He figured his noirish 16mm black-and-white film about two cabdrivers searching for a guy who owes them money would play at festivals, college campuses and Chinese American communities.