[music]

Brigid Bergin: You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Alison Stewart. For independent film fans, you are in luck. The Asian American International Film Festival is back in town. Since its inception in 1978, the festival showcases the work of independent visual artists from artists throughout the Asian diaspora. The 12-day festival has something for everyone. Documentaries, feature films, short films for history buffs. How about a documentary about the impacts of gentrification in Chinatowns across America? For those who want to laugh, perhaps a heartwarming comedy, about a teen coming out the closet.

Oh, did I mention there's a selection of music videos for music lovers too? That's just a snippet of the 120 films slated for this year's festival. You can check these films out in theaters across the country, or On Demand through the festival website. With me now to give a detailed preview of the festival are Kris Montello, the festival's programming manager, and Kayla Wong, the festival director. Kris and Kayla, thank you so much for joining us.

Kris Montello: Thank you so much for having us.

Kayla Wong: Yes, pleasure to be here, Brigid.

Brigid Bergin: This year marks the 46th year of the film festival. Kris, before we dive into the program, can you tell us a little more about the history of the festival? What were the origins?

Kris Montello: Well, sure. I think that this originated, I think out of a group of activists and artists in Chinatown here in New York City in the '70s. Kayla, is there more you want to add there?

Kayla Wong: Yes, no. I just want to say that it was started out of a group from Basement Workshop, which was artists from local NYC, who were wanting to create work that reflected our reality. The festival started after Asian CineVision, a media and arts nonprofit, was created from folks from that group. They moved on to creating this festival so that we can platform our moving image pieces, and 46 years later, here we are, continuing to fight for our perspective to be seen, and for our stories to be told.

Brigid Bergin: Kayla, can you tell me how many different countries are represented with films in this festival? I think the website says something like 29 countries, 25 languages. Is that correct?

Kayla Wong: Yes, we get films from all over the world, and they are from any part of what is considered Asia or the Pacific Islands. Anybody who is identifying as such, they can submit their films. Then we have various languages from very specific dialects from mountainous regions of the Philippines, up through-- just straight up, we're just talking English and we're going to have a mixture with Chinglish conversations here. Mixture of Chinese and English, and it's so representative of just the expansiveness of the Asian and Asian diaspora community.

Brigid Bergin: I want to get into some of the different aspects of the festival. One is called Retrospectives in Dialogue. Can you tell us what that series is about?

Kris Montello: Yes, absolutely. We have three films that are in a conversation. Two of them are restorations of classics in the Asian American film space Hito Hata and The Fall of the I-Hotel, both of which tell the story of diaspora communities in various parts of the United States. Hito Hata is a narrative film about Japanese Americans living in California, whereas The Fall of the I-Hotel is a documentary about the struggle to survive in 1980s San Francisco for a group of elderly Filipino immigrants.

We have those stories about those communities in conversation with a recent documentary called Big Fight In Little Chinatown, which is a documentary which explores the struggles to operate businesses during the COVID pandemic, which took an extraordinarily large toll on Chinatowns, in particular. It's a sort of looking at the history of struggles for these communities to survive over the last few decades.

Brigid Bergin: We have a clip actually, of Big Fight In Little Chinatown, from the trailer that I want to play. Let's listen to a little bit of that now.

[Movie clip - Big Fight In Little Chinatown]

Brigid Bergin: That's a clip from Big Fight In Little Chinatown, one of the 120 films that is part of the Asian American Film Festival. Kayla, I want to talk a little bit about the COVID-19 pandemic and the enormous impact it's had on people across the globe, but especially with a troubling rise in anti-Asian violence and discrimination. I'm sure there were a lot of incredible films that explored this idea. What about this film, in particular, stuck out to you?

Kayla Wong: Yes. It touches on the rise of anti-Asian hate that was prominent during the pandemic, the scapegoating that was occurring. The way that this documentary explored that in conversation with the greater issues of gentrification in these communities, was something that we wanted to explore. Because in New York City, this is a very big issue for us, and there are perhaps resources that we would want to highlight by bringing this film and conversation to light.

We do have a panel discussion happening on Thursday, August 3rd at 7:00 PM, with the filmmakers from all three of these films, Big Fight In Little Chinatown, The Fall of the I-Hotel, and Hito Hata, to talk about when they made these films, this was an issue, till now, how these are still issues that are pervading our communities, and what are the steps that we can take to address this. That will be moderated by Abby Sun, the director of artists programs, and editor of Documentary Magazine.

Brigid Bergin: Where's that conversation going to be?

Kayla Wong: It'll be live streams on Asian CineVision, Facebook Live, and our Twitch channel.

Brigid Bergin: Oh, that's great. I mentioned that another component of the festival is a musical component. Kayla, can you tell us a little bit more about music night out?

Kayla Wong: Yes. That is our centerpiece presentation. It is a music video showcase, but it's also a performance of H.P. Mendoza's Attack, Decay, Release, which is an immersive music extravaganza. It very much encapsulates what we are trying to highlight this year in the festival, in the humanity, the strength of humanity after COVID, and how we are coming together as people and building a new world together and moving forward and grieving and laughing and crying to just move forward.

It's going to be a dance party. It's an immersive piece, so there's going to be audience participation and projection mapping. A lot of cool things that he's doing. You come out to that, it's going be very much of a way to connect with your fellow New Yorkers.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. We're going to play a little piece of music from one of the videos. It's called Subliminal directed by Jess X. Snow. Let's listen to it a little bit, and then we'll talk about it in just sec.

[MUSIC - Jess X. Snow: Subliminal]

Brigid Bergin: Kayla, that video, I thought was really beautiful. If you could talk a little bit about the visual there. It looks to me like a relationship with a mother and a daughter, but tell me what your view of that was.

Kayla Wong: Yes, it is about connecting with your inner child and finding peace, which is something that so many of us don't take the time to do, especially nowadays when we are just fighting to survive. Subliminal, actually, is a beautiful representation of finding a moment of breath. A lot of these music videos are touching on so many different sides of the Asian American experience where we just need to feel our feelings and be okay with that and connect with our traumas.

Brigid Bergin: Can you describe the visuals of it a little bit for us?

Kayla Wong: Yes. It's in a desert scape and it has this beautiful dance of the camera with a child actress and the older version of herself.

Brigid Bergin: Kris, I want to talk about one of the mission statements for the festival for Asian CineVision. It's a non-profit running the festival. It talks about promoting the multiplicity of the Asian experience through film. Can you tell us more about how you've planned to do that this year?

Kris Montello: Sure. Well, I think that what we've been talking about a lot is the idea of community and also this music video event that it's a dance party where we all come together. I think that for me personally as a film programmer, I really strongly value the experience of being in a theater and how we can come together to enjoy this myriad of different perspectives. You go to the theater to laugh, to cry, to see yourself, and to also empathize with people who are different from you. I think that's what we can offer is the breadth of different experiences. Often, in the past, in Hollywood, Asian actors were relegated to these marginalized roles.

Maybe they would appear in the background on ER as the background Filipino nurse. Well, we have a movie called Nurse Unseen, which is a documentary of the history of Filipino nurses and in particular, again, talking about COVID, their role in the pandemic, so we're bringing these traditionally marginalized roles to the forefront. We have genres like martial arts movies, which, of course, are really thought of as that's where you get to see Asian people have a prominent role is in this Hong Kong action movie. We have Asian filmmakers taking back those stereotypes and making it their own.

It's all about the different genres, but also different stories, different perspectives, and all the different countries and languages that you alluded to, that Kayla mentioned. This is a prism where we're showing just about any kind of film imaginable, all telling these stories starring Asian Americans by Asian Americans, really the breadth of the content, as you've mentioned is quite something.

Brigid Bergin: Kayla, we are touching on this, but I wonder if you could talk a little bit more about what representation looks like in the Asian film industry in the past and how it's been evolving over the years.

Kayla Wong: It has not been great historically. There have been in mainstream media representations that our caricatures really are not representative of our lived experiences, and so through the past, there's waves. There's waves of representation in Hollywood, and the most recently, in the last few years, there has been an uptick in films that are being funded by people of Asian descent, which has helped. This year alone, a big-- Oh wow, Everything Everywhere All at Once.

Brigid Bergin: I'm glad you said it because I mean, of course.

Kayla Wong: Yes, yes. The most Oscar nominations and then the big best film award. It broke all these barriers and it really showcased in the film itself represented so much of Asian history and Asian film history. It brought in Wong Kar-wai. It brought in [unintelligible 00:14:49]. It brings in elements of family and filial piety, but also like the struggles of being a young person who doesn't get along with their parents. It is something that so many of us could relate to, and we need to see more of these projects.

There's so many up-and-coming filmmakers or filmmakers who have been existing and struggling in the Asian American creative community who just need to get the platform to have people support their projects. Many of them come through festivals like ours, to find committee and to feel seen and legitimized, but really this could move on to the mainstream media and have folks understand the universality of all of our so many of our stories.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. In just our last minute here, if you had to shout out one film that you want to tell our listeners to be sure to check out, each get one. Kris, what would you send our audience to watch?

Kris Montello: Well, our closing night film on Sunday is history's first British Filipino film, Raging Grace. It's a horror movie. Speaking about all of those different genres, what's better to see in a theater than a horror film?

Brigid Bergin: [chuckles] Absolutely.

Kris Montello: That would be Raging Grace.

Brigid Bergin: Kayla, what about you?

Kayla Wong: On that idea of experiencing things together and creating new works and new experiences, our interactive media gallery is not a screening per se, but a whole installation of VR and other digital new media pieces. Check that out in Brooklyn today or tomorrow and Saturday.

Brigid Bergin: Oh, that's so great. We're going to leave it there for now. My guests have been programming manager, Kris Montello, and festival director, Kayla Wong. We have been talking about the Asian American International Film Festival. It started yesterday and runs through Sunday, August 6th. Check it out. Thank you both for joining me on All Of It.

Kayla Wong: Yes, thank you.

Kris Montello: Thank you so much.

 

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