Michele Josue highlights the virtually untold story of Filipino nurses Stories of Filipino nurses are made visible in the documentary “Nurse Unseen” by Emmy award-winning documentarian Michele Josue. The 90-minute feature tells the stories of Filipino nur ...
Exploring the World through ‘Fire & Water’
In this big, wide world, Asian diasporas experience change and introspection in all sorts of environments. Will it be in the water? In the heat of the sun? Or the shadow of a volcano? Wherever it is, and wherever they go, there is a story worth telling. ...
Linh Tran Got the Green Light
A remarkable debut by a new young filmmaker “I have no idea what I’m doing with my career,” Linh Tran candidly stated via phone interview. That uncertainty is confidently felt throughout her debut feature, “Waiting for the Light to Change.” Tran’s film, w ...
‘Leading from the Front’ of Asian American Identity
The zeitgeist of Asians in the United States is defined by questions: How do we bear the sacrifices of our families who decided to stake our futures on this land? With whom do we connect as a nationality defined by the world’s ethnicities? And as we look ...
‘Better Luck Tomorrow’: 20 Years Later
Tackling the legacy of the greatest Asian American filmThis article contains spoilers.On October 4, 2019, the LA Times’ released an article titled “The 20 best Asian American films of the last 20 years.” And number one on their list was the 2002 crime dra ...
Iris Yamashita: extraordinarily under-appreciated screenwriter
The Woman Who Penned 'Letters from Iwo Jima' Has Never Stopped Writing “If our children can sleep safely for one more day, it would be worth the one more day that we defend this island!” So declares General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, played by Ken Watanabe ...
To Remember Is to Set Free
Julie Ha and Eugene Yi Transnationalize the Roots of Anti-Asian Hate in ‘Free Chol Soo Lee’ Asian/American films incepted out of the impulse to speak back, and perhaps more critically, they carved a political space to speak from. First-time directors ...
Finding the universal in ‘It’s a Mad Mad Multiverse’
Dreams, reality, folklore, and everything in between: “It’s a Mad Mad Multiverse” encompasses it all. The collection of shorts traverses unique universes but the themes are universal, covering guilt, trauma, grief, longing, nostalgia, and friendship. Here ...
What does it mean to be ‘Chosen’?
The underdog congressional campaign of David Kim It has been said that the political identity of Korean Americans was forged in the fires of Sa-I-Gu (also known as the Los Angeles Riots). Following the Rodney King verdict and the sentencing of Soon Ja Du, ...