Written By: Saiya Floyd It was hard for the panelists of the Filipino Filmmakers Roundtable at AAIFF43 to imagine such a gathering as little as five years ago. A common theme for the night was how far, and how quickly the Filipino filmmaking commun ...
Chasing the American dream in ‘Take Out Girl’
Written By: Saiya Floyd The first glimpse we get of Tera — the protagonist of “Take Out Girl” — is of the back of her head. More specifically, the baseball cap that says “Never Compromise.” And neither Tera or the movie does. When we meet T ...
Academic integrity versus ‘Stealing School’
Written By: Saiya Floyd On its surface, “Stealing School” is about the academic trial of an undergrad student accused of cheating on her final paper. But the film — writer/director Li Dong’s feature debut — is made stronger by the various subplots ...
How filmmakers are coping during COVID-19
Written By: Saiya Floyd Earlier this summer, we spoke to three New York based artists on how they were handling the current pandemic. We spoke to Wynton Wong (interview on 5/13/20), Vera Chow (interview on 5/14/20), and Chithra Jeyaram (interview on 6/1 ...
Farewell to ‘Fresh Off the Boat’
Written By: Saiya Floyd Looking back, the 2010s were a jolt of energy that catapulted Asian American media representation solidly into the mainstream. Of course there had been a few breakthrough stars before the 2010s, and a few movies and TV shows th ...
A New York minute with Celia Au
Written By: Saiya Floyd The first thing that strikes you when you see Celia Au in person is that she’s cool. She strides into Housing Works Bookstore and Cafe in SoHo, in a mostly black ensemble (a requisite for any New Yorker), made unique with bold ...
Stomping out expectations in Genta Matsugami’s ‘Demolition Girl’
Written By: Saiya Floyd Genta Matsugami’s “Demolition Girl” transports the audience to rural Japan and offers a look into the life of a working class teenage girl. Set in Gunma Prefecture in the months before the girl’s last year of high school, “Demo ...
‘KD’ chases life after a brush with death
Written By: Saiya Floyd Imagine you’ve lived a long life as a loving father. You worked hard and did what you could to provide for your family. Then you fall into a coma for three months, and when you wake up, you hear your children planning to carry ...
Sasie Sealy takes us on a Chinatown adventure with ‘Lucky Grandma’
Written By: Saiya Floyd New York City is a special place to live, but also a place full of paradoxes. It’s full of famous sites and neighborhoods, but also teeming with hidden gems and secret subcultures. New Yorkers carve out their own pocket of the ...