By Eugenia Beh


1. It’s Friday or Saturday night and you and your SO want to go out . What’s better than dinner and a movie? How about dinner and a BAAFF movie, like Shanghai Calling? (mmm...Daniel Henney…)

2. It’s much more fun to sit in the dark in silence with other people than be awkward at home together.

3. Impress others by talking about that time you and your date saw Ang Lee, or Booboo Stewart, or David Henry Hwang at BAAFF!

4. Learn how other couples deal with their relationships when the going gets tough.

5. If nothing else, at least you know your own relationship can’t be this complicated. Right?

Want to get in on the fun? Mark your calendars for the BAAFF in October!

By: Kenny Sui-Fung Yim

Have you ever been the only Asian American in a room or around a dinner table? I have, a lot of times; it happens when you grow up in a rural town and attend a predominately white college. I’ve learned to flip the script. So I ask, how often do you see the only Caucasian in a room (forget Sophia Coppola’s Lost in Translation for a moment, we’ll return to that)? That’s White Privilege - the phrase gaining currency through Buzzfeed and other social media sites, and that’s the simple answer for why Asian American films aren’t only for Asian American audiences.

Many of my Asian American friends go with Anglo sounding first names. My aunt gave me mine so that it would be easier - easier for whom, easier to do what? It wasn’t until I lived in Hong Kong, when my Asian friends started calling me white-washed, that I began to see fault lines. Why is it that, at my most basic, in my name, there was a battlefield? These questions are emerging, percolating, and deepening.

When I was growing up, I believed that white was right, was pretty (even for a boy), and what to strive for. And even in my twenties, I see museum art is full of white bodies, white faces, white names. It’s hard to get away from the clutch of such a persistently reinforced ideal, especially when people within your own race even try to deny it. I know people, gay and straight, who only date whites, who desire whiteness only.

So back to Lost in Translation, a film I was taught to like, a film my crowd, (read: artsy, mature, white) raved about – “a slice of life” they called it. I wanted to fit in, so I nodded along, inadvertently reinforcing a stereotype and denying my personal experience. Was this my life too? In some ways, yes, but in many ways, no – I was not an aging, overly tall, actor in advertisement with the dry wit of someone like Bill Murray (who now reminds me a lot of Frasier Crane, another white actor). That name now sounds foreign to me, in a new way it didn’t when I was growing up.

Art is a mode of transportation. We don’t need to see ourselves in the art for it to be impactful. But, it does take a willingness to try, and to entertain new questions, new forms of identification. I became very good at trying to understand myself, to appreciate art that spoke about otherness.  

Recently, I’ve been laughing good-humoredly, and approvingly, about being a banana – yellow on the outside, white within. I forget where that metaphor came from – a movie, most likely. That’s the Yellow curse, perhaps, to have to articulate my own experiences, instead of being able to take it as accepted or dominant. But, no, that doesn’t totally right, either. It also is a privilege, a gift, to not just have my identity handed to me, but to actively shape it. So this year, I think I will challenge whether I am in fact a banana. I’ll go to BAAFF looking for another image to define, to redefine, myself instead. And that’s something any of us can do, already do.

Join us for the Boston Asian American Film Festival October 23 to 26th for more perspective on cultural identity explored in film.

BAAFF.org caught up with Yuriko Romer, Director of Mrs. Judo which screen at last year's BAAFF. She is working on a new film, Diamond Diplomacy (working title), in San Francisco.

BAAFF: What is the film scene like out in San Francisco? How does it differ from L.A.?

Romer: San Francisco is a great close-knit film community. It's definitely smaller and more indie/less big studio than LA. Which is why I like it. Of course for the ambitious youth, they may want to head south to LA for more opportunities. I don't know what I'm missing out on, but I love living up here more than I would LA.

BAAFF: How much does being Asian American come into your work?

Romer: Being Asian, being American and being Asian American all come into my work. These are the lenses that I see the world through and how I interpret things. So in the case of my last film, and my new one it is completely connected to the subject matter. It is why I care about the subjects and how I enter into the worlds of the subjects. I think I also view it from the inside as well as the inside.

But even more that the production, the outreach the public engagement and the connection with the audiences has been very much connected to being Asian, being American and being Asian American. I say it this way because sometimes the three aren't the same and I think it is the intersection of all that make my perspective mine. In both films my ability to speak Japanese and the cultural familiarity were very key while interviewing and working closely with certain subjects. But also when I am in Japan I see through the lens of being an American. Then I think there are some things that are particularly seen from the Asian American lens, such as during my interviews with Mashi (the baseball player) I wanted to hear about his experience of being Asian in the U.S. particularly in the mid 60's not long after the war.

BAAFF: What has been your experience with BAAFF?

Romer: BAAFF is wonderful, the festival was fun and I really enjoyed meeting the staff and the other filmmakers. And it's so nice to visit Boston in the fall! The volunteers and staff were terrific. A young Harvard student came to the airport to pick me up and then insisted on taking me out to lunch! That definitely made an impression on me. I highly recommend submitting to the festival. I also think if BAAFF starts getting a reputation for "taking care of filmmakers" (including the monetary side due to travel and such), then you would get even more submissions!

Thanks Yuriko! Watch for her new film Diamond Diplomacy (working title) which is a documentary film about the 140+ year relationship between two disparately differing nations that share a common national pastime, baseball. In 1868 the two countries entered diplomatic relations, in 1873 baseball became a part of that relationship, and since has been both the cause for celebration and heartbreak.

Better Luck Tomorrow (2003)

Known as the little film that could despite being turned down by every major studio because of its all-Asian cast and despite being made using maxed out credit cards (and with an assist by MC Hammer), Better Luck Tomorrow is something of a legend in Asian American filmmaking lore. The film debuted at Sundance, where the late Roger Ebert famously defended Asian Americans’ “right to be whatever the hell they want to be” in response to a white audience member deploring director Justin Lin’s “amoral” portrayal of Asian Americans. Following Sundance, the film was bought by MTV Films for general distribution, launching Justin Lin’s career and becoming the highest-profile Hollywood film to feature an all-Asian American cast since The Joy Luck Club (1993) and Flower Drum Song (1961).

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004)
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)
A Very Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas (2011)

If Better Luck Tomorrow revealed the dark side of the model minority myth, the Harold and Kumar trilogy takes the myth and flips it on its head, to hilarious effect. Made by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (“that white guy who directed Dude, Where’s my Car?”), the films turned John Cho (“that Asian guy from American Pie”) and Kal Penn (“that Indian guy from Van Wilder”) into household names, and reignited Neil Patrick Harris’s career. (And made us all really, really want to eat at White Castle.) Watch for cameos from an unrecognizable Christopher Meloni and supporting roles from Rob Corddry and Danny Trejo (in a Christmas sweater, no less). And an anthropomorphic bag of weed.

The Namesake (2006)

Fans of Pulitizer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s bestselling book will be pleased by this faithful and moving adaptation directed by Mira Nair. Nair skillfully transfers Lahiri’s prose to the screen, and the casting is stellar, with Bollywood stars Irrfan Khan and Tabu as first generation immigrant parents and Kal Penn in one of his first leading roles outside of Harold and Kumar. That the film wasn’t nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay still chaps to this day.

Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987) / Vincent Who? (2009)

Often taught in college courses, Renee Tajima-Pena and Christine Choy’s Academy Award-nominated documentary about the slaying of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American in Detroit who was killed because his attackers thought he was Japanese, is just as timely and resonant today as it was in the ‘80’s, especially with China replacing Japan as today’s economic boogeyman. The light sentence that Chin’s killers received outraged and united Asian American communities across nationalities in a pan-Asian effort to seek justice. Curtis Chin’s 2009 follow-up documentary looks at Vincent Chin’s legacy and how familiar younger Asian Americans are with his name. (Hint: not a whole lot.) Both films are a must-see for viewers interested in social justice and American history.

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs (2014)

Director Grace Lee has given us the documentary about Grace Lee Boggs - the standout figure in Lee’s 2005 film, The Grace Lee Project - that we were waiting for and that she richly deserves.  The film chronicles Bogg’s lifetime of political and social activism, from her involvement in the labor, civil rights and Black Power movements; her marriage to fellow activist James Boggs; her friendships and partnerships with luminaries such as Angela Davis, Bill Moyers, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, and Danny Glover, to her present day initiatives to revitalize and rebuild Detroit, her hometown. At the age of 99, Boggs still possesses a keen mind and wit and is seen vigorously debating with her surviving friends and colleagues throughout the film. Like Yuri Kochiyama, Boggs more than smashes the stereotype of the passive, retiring Asian American who does not make waves. To expand upon the Blue Scholars’ most well-known song, when I grow up, I want to be just like Yuri Kochiyama – and Grace Lee Boggs.


By Eugenia Beh
photo credit: dumplingmag.com