About

Asian CineVision (ACV) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media arts organization devoted to the development, promotion, preservation, and exhibition of Asian and Asian American film and video.

Since 1977, ACV has presented the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), the nation’s first  festival of its kind and the premier showcase for the best in independent Asian and Asian American cinema.

Our Roots

Grassroots media activists in New York’s Chinatown founded ACV in 1975 under the name CCTV (Chinese Cable TV). At a time of exceptional energy and assertion on the part of diverse cultural groups, claiming their voices and places in a landscape that had been dominated by European Americans, ACV’s founders saw the need to bring greater social and cultural awareness of Asian American experience and history to both Asian American communities and to the public at large. Moving-image media had become the nation’s common language, its most pervasive source of images and ideas, and Asian Americans barely registered on its screens. ACV’s founders wanted to address problems faced by Asian Americans in both representation in the media and access to the means of media production and distribution. Technologies and outlets for independent media were multiplying, creating new possibilities for Asian Americans both behind and in front of the cameras, in production and distribution, in scholarship and practice, in every style and platform of media arts.

Asian American Identity

When ACV first incorporated, its principal purpose was “to produce Chinese language television programs,” but a few years later — reflecting the growth of an overarching, self-conscious Asian American identity and expanded needs for an Asian American media organization based in New York, the certificate of incorporation was amended to specify much larger purposes: “To produce and to exhibit films and video programs about the experience and culture of Asian and Asian American communities…,” “to provide consultation and technical assistance for artists, cultural and media organizations,” “to publish various documentation,” and “to organize seminars, conferences and workshops…”