Asian Cinevision (ACV), in collaboration with A24, brought virtual screenings of the award-winning film, MINARI, to a number of school communities in the NY/NJ area as part of AAPI Heritage Month. Participating schools included Dwight Englewood School, Ethical Culture Fieldston School, Horace Mann, Riverdale Country School, Speyer School and Trinity School. In total, nearly 700 families, faculty and staff from these schools registered for the screenings.
MINARI tells the story of an immigrant Korean American family who moves to an Arkansas farm in search of their own American dream. Amidst the challenges of this new life in the strange and rugged Ozarks, they discover the undeniable resilience of family and what really makes a home. The film captured 2020 awards attention including best picture, best director and soundtrack nominations. Legendary Korean Actress Yuen Yah-jung was awarded the Oscar best supporting actress.
“Bringing universally American stories from an Asian-American perspective like MINARI to new audiences is core to Asian Cinevision’s mission” says ACV Executive Director John Woo. “Working together with A24, school diversity leadership and parent organizations represented a wonderful opportunity to share a beautiful film with families and faculty/staff across the New York and New Jersey area.”
With the recent rise in public recognition of challenges facing the Asian-American community, many diversity leaders, parent organizations and Asian-American affinity groups at these educational institutions understand the need to provide meaningful programming to their communities. MINARI provides a touching and relatable view into aspects of the Asian-American experience that families are able to enjoy together.
“Our recent virtual screening of MINARI enabled our community of hilltop schools to gather together to celebrate good storytelling–the type of nuanced story where you can connect and fall in love with characters because you recognize a shared humanity as well as having a window into the experiences of a family in pursuit of the American dream” said Antoinette Quarshie, Assistant Director of Global Studies at Riverdale Country School. “This event allowed us to celebrate and support the AAPI community as well as allowing us to make space to discuss the hopes and dreams that we have for our own families. We need to do more events like this and Riverdale is grateful for this special partnership with A24 and Asian CineVision.”
After the screenings, a number of the schools held a virtual “Talk Back” discussions over Zoom for their school communities to discuss the film, its themes and how it provided both windows and mirrors for peoples’ own experiences. These discussions also included conversation about the importance of Asian-American representation in media.
If you are a school representative and are interested in participating in screenings like this, please contact us at info@asiancinevision.org