AN INTERVIEW WITH CHRISTINE CHOY

BY DENISE KUNG, EVELYN MATEOS, AND JACLYN LEE

In the spring of 2002, Angel Velasco Shaw taught a media and culture course called “Imagining Asia/Pacific America” for the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program at New York University. For their final projects, students were asked to watch three films made by Asian American filmmakers living in New York and conduct interviews with them based on their research and what they had gained from this process as non-filmmakers coming from diversified backgrounds. First published CineVue June 19-27, 2002. ©Asian CineVision

Students: Did you ever meet a filmmaker or see something that made you say, “I love what she or he does?” 

Christine Choy: One day there was a student who was showing a movie on Vietnam at Columbia University and I happened to be there. Meanwhile, I didn’t know there was a war going on. I was not very politically informed-I was doing my American dream. The film really moved my heart and I started crying. I couldn’t believe that such a small country was being invaded by America. These are small people, small yellow peo­ple fighting against these huge machine guns, Napalm, the bombs, and land mines. I thought, “Wow, film cannot only entertain me, but at the same time raise my consciousness, change my outlook completely.” So I went back to school at Columbia and went into the film department. There were basi­cally all white males, not even one woman. And they asked me, “What do you want?” I said that “I just want to see how you make movies.” Sometimes I tagged along. They didn’t want to teach me anything. 

I had a roommate, and she was very radical. She knew somebody who was in a film collective. They were doing a lot of propaganda films against Hollywood, against war, and about all kinds of things like pro-feminism, pro-African American, Latino, and Native American struggles. She asked me to check it out. I joined the collective in 1972. In 1974, I took over because all the people left. It was like a hippie joint, but they made a lot of movies. I changed the name to “Third World Newsreel.” I stayed there ten years and then I started anoth­er company called “Film News Now Foundation.” 

Students: Considering that there are so many filmmakers out there, what makes you so different?

Christine: It was because I was the first Asian woman ever in this country on the east coast.

Students: What about now though? 

Christine: Why am I so unique? I’m not unique anymore. 

Students: Of course you are. 

Christine: Don’t say I am very unique. People thought I was crazy running around with a movie camera. I had my daughter when I was 18, so she was in a backpack and I was shooting with a camera in Chinatown! I was unique because I was an immi­grant from many countries. My mother is Mongolian. My father is Korean. I was born in Communist China and grew up in Shanghai. From the People’s Republic of China, we went to· Hong Kong in order to get out. In Hong Kong, it was very diffi­cult because they speak in Cantonese and I spoke Shanghainese and Mandarin. Then from there, we went to South Korea, where I didn’t speak a word of Korean and I had to force myself to learn Korean. I was a minority there. From Korea, I went to the United States and went to an all-white Catholic school-again a minority. I think because of my experiences, I never really fit into one nationality. My experiences have been about co-existence. So you have to look at people in a much more complex way-not only in skin color or in nationality because they are different. I wanted to be a filmmaker, but at the same time in my own way, not really go through the Hollywood system. 

Students: I know you focus on specific issues within your films, what are the main ones that you wanted to get out there-that you felt had to be represented?

Christine: Justice. If someone got really fucked over by the American system and they didn’t have a voice that’s what I was interested in representing. Whether it’s a group or individual, regardless of their gender or nationality. Justice is something that is very complex. When you have a powerful position, you’re wealthy, regardless of what happens, you receive justice. The sys­tem is inclined toward their direction. I don’t think that it is nec­essarily applicable to America, it is a worldwide phenomenon. That’s why there are wars and criminal trials going on. So I always liked to speak for those people who were smaller, but who were good people and they wanted to air out their grievances. 

Students: So you want them to be more represented? 

Christine: Right. In one way I am able to portray Asians as they are. They are not monolithic. They are not only Chinese. They are not all yellow. They are a complex group from many different nationalities. In New York City alone, there are actually 120 spoken Asian languages. Does the American public know that? No. They cannot even distinguish between Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean.

The mixed blooded people are really in big trouble. They always try to classify you as one or the other, same with Latinos. 

The complexities of the Asian popula­tion have always interested me, especially its growing number, not only necessarily in the sciences, but also in finance, in the politi­cal arena, and in the arts and literature as well-filmmaking! I think I was more or less part of the first wave to raise the con­sciousness of the immigrant population to give them a voice. 

Students: In your opinion, from everything that you have done, what has been your 

greatest accomplishment … what makes you feel good?

Christine: What makes me feel good? Bringing my mother to the United States.

Students: That’s your greatest accomplishment? 

Christine: I think so. Becoming a citizen is something I never dreamed about. My other accomplishments make me a very happy person. I went through a lot of hardships, but it taught me that anger will never accomplish anything. You really have to accomplish something with a sense of humor, a sense of self-criticism all the time. Also my three children, I think they’re wonderful.

Students: I know you have a very strong opinion of the way Hollywood portrays Asians. Has that changed in any way? 

Christine: I think that it’s not a question of change. They just disappeared-the absence of Asians in films-because Hollywood made these horrible films portraying Asians. The last one I saw was HEAVEN AND EARTH by Oliver Stone. It was about this Vietnamese woman. It was awful. She spoke per­fect English while she was in Vietnam. The minute she arrived in the United States, her English was broken. That does not make sense to me. Asian filmmakers like John Woo and Wayne Wang began to tackle issues dealing with American society as a whole. Ang Lee, same thing, but he sort of dropped us like a hot potato. What other Asian directors, in terms of Hollywood films? Not too many. Jet Li is always paired with other actors and actress­es rather than Asian actors, same with Russell Wong. So they just disappeared. Maybe they’re not marketable. 

Students: What do you think is making this happen? 

Christine: It just has a lot to do with the suc­cess of films from Asia, especially from China. You can make films targeted to Asian markets much cheaper. A lot of Hollywood companies have a second headquarters in Shanghai and Beijing. Miramax, Columbia Tri-Star, Sony, and Fox all have subsidiaries in Asia and they devel­op a lot of films in Asia rather than in the U.S. Therefore Asian Americans are really just not important anymore. The films done by Zhang Yimou or Chen Kaige or Wong Kar-Wai-they can’t get the Asian American film population to eat it up enough, so why bother making’ films about Asian Americans?

Students: We watched your films – SHOT HEARD AROUND THE WORLD, WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN? and HOMES APART. Two of them dealt with injustice, more or less, and the other one was more in a personal story context because of your mixed back ground. Why did you choose to use such different types of techniques like narration … settings? 

Christine: It depends, each subject is different. HOMES APART: Two Koreas-it’s about the Korean War. Who gives a damn about the families who have been separated for the past 45 years? You think Americans give a damn? It’s a big issue to those Korean families that had been separated for 50 years. When you’re dealing with the larger issue, you have to personalize it in order for Americans to relate with Asian American experiences. This gradually opens up a larger context. Whereas with Who Killed Vincent Chin? 1 ‘m not in it, there’s no narra­tion, no voice over whatsoever. It’s sort of interesting because when I finished the film, I actually showed it to some teenagers. If they could understand it then it’s okay because it’s a very complex issue. 

Students: IN WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN? you had Ronald Ebens just talking and going on and on. Did you get to interview him personally or was it another crew that you had? 

Christine: No, we did.

Students: But he was so open….

Christine: Because I acted like I was stupid. He didn’t really take me seriously. I wasn’t being arrogant. He didn’t think the film would be so popular, and seen by many people. Sometimes you can use your Asianness, you can use your feminism to win. He was so open, he just hung himself basically. Making that film in itself was very difficult because the film is dealing with a murder case-hard core criminal issues. 

So we applied for a grant to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, small amounts of it have to be given to independent filmmakers. They liked the film idea, but they didn’t trust me. They gave me three conditions why they would not give me the money. Number one: I didn’t have a journalist back- ground. Number two: Who cares about this case? Where are your constituencies? Who is going to be your audience? Number three: How can you be objective being Asian? I had a girlfriend who had a journalist degree, I got her on board as an executive producer. I flew to Detroit, talked to the local television station and convinced them that this was a worthwhile investigation because there were a lot of news clips. But no one actually did a very serious, in depth investigation. I told them that it will be a part of Asian American history. It will be important and the station manager was very sympathetic. Of course he didn’t give me a cent. How can I be objective? No. It’s difficult. I cannot dye my hair blonde or change my name to Mary Smith. I am who I am. They were very concerned and instead of giving me com­plete authority they attached the project with a white journalist. His name was Herb Dresner from Harvard who worked on Front Line in a WBGH station. Every move I did had to get approval from him, otherwise I would not get the money. How disgusting is that? But I swallowed my pride because I thought the case was so important. I took the money. 

Students: Why did you show the corpse so many times? 

Christine: To gross you out. In WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN? if you really count how many times I said Vincent Chin is dead, it’s about 32 times. I was using a particular methodology. It’s called “minimalism.” Minimalism is that you have a musical note like-“do re mi do re mi. … ” Every time you play that musical note, there is a slight variation. When you repeat the same images over again, every time you see the image, there’s new information introduced. So it’s like an addictive way of editing-a whole nonlinear way of telling a story rather than chronologically-by date, month, year, it’s very linear. That’s traditional documentary techniques. Whereas this is non-linear, which is much more interactive with the audience.

Students: Do you pick a specific audience first?

Christine: No, emotion. I have to capture the emotion. And that’s very easy to do in narrative films. You make actors cry, you make somebody crack jokes, but in documentaries, it’s very difficult. Some people are very boring on camera, like lawyers can be boring. So sometimes when you edit the mate- rial, you have to make them alive. In order to make them alive, you have to position them in between something a little more emotional. You have to balance them constantly. You have to capture emotion in order to communicate with people. 

Students: So you communicate with different types of people through emotions? 

Christine: That’s right. You can call it manipulation. Yeah, by using a lot of music. All my films have a lot of music because music is emotion. If you hear music, you may feel bad, you may want to dance, you may want to get up; you may want to samba, or rock. Music lights you up. When you are really in a bad mood, you don’t want to hear music jumping up and down. 

Students: Making these movies, you probably did a lot of research on the subjects and heard all the different perspec­tives on them. How do you know what to believe and who to believe? How do you choose? 

Christine: You don’t have.to choose them. Some people tell lies. They hang themselves. When you start a lie, you have to continue a lie, one fact after another fact. 

Students: When making these films, do you think about who you want the films to be shown to? 

Christine: My primary goal is for the American community.

~

Original Scans below:

On Thursday, August 7th, Conner Sen Warnick’s feature film debut, CHARACTERS DISAPPEARING, will be screened at the 48th Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) in NYC.  In an interview with CineVue, Warnick explained that this film was birthed from the confusion and despair he felt during the rise in racism against Asians and Asian-Americans towards the end of 2021. Making this film is a way to combat hate and search for hope. 

To work in the present, Warnick decided to research the past; specifically the cultural revolution in the 1960s-1970s in New York City’s Chinatown. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and at the time felt like there weren’t many firsthand accounts of this movement in mainstream media—he wanted to dig deeper. During his research, he was struck by the parallels he found between the activists back then and his friend group today—the feeling of trying to identify one’s self, amongst the masses of a movement. 

Warnick describes this film as a very personal expression of people working through despair and sadness, set against a historic backdrop. It dives into the differences in how the characters view the world, as well as themselves in it. Each methodology reflects an experience of Warnick’s, back when he was working through his own identity and beliefs. 

One of the themes of CHARACTERS DISAPPEARING is the need for a space to find individualism within the collective. How can someone, who is committed to a communal effort, exist as an individual without sacrificing themself? Herein lies the dichotomy of wanting to feel like you’re part of something important, while trying to retain your own identity and beliefs. Rising against your desire to create change is the tension of disagreeing with some aspects of the movement, but knowing this is too important a mission to give up. 

With his character-driven debut feature, Warnick offers a meditative and thoughtful rumination on New York’s 1960s Chinatown, through the eyes of three young New Yorkers searching for a community to call their own. In the making of this film, elders from the community could see their movement, reflected back to them by the young actors who now continue their legacy. Their pasts were made alive again, a surreal and impactful feeling.  This is just one of the ways Warnick shows us the importance of looking back and learning from the past. And finally, Warnick leaves this message to his viewers: “Don’t worry about ‘following’ the film. Sit with the emotional and visual experience.” 

CHARACTERS DISAPPEARING will screen at Regal Union Square on Thursday, August 7 at 8:30 PM. It is one of many offerings from the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), which runs from July 31 – August 10 with both in-person and on-demand screenings.

Language is the foundation of all stories—ACV was originally founded to produce Chinese-language television programs. However, as a collective Asian American identity emerged and the need for broader representation grew, its mission evolved. ACV expanded its focus to producing and showcasing films and video content that explore the experiences and cultures of Asian and Asian American communities, while also offering consultation and technical support to artists, cultural institutions, and media organizations.

ACV organized the first Asian American film festival in the United States in 1978. During its three-day program, ACV screened 46 films at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side of New York City. This sparked a growth of Asian American film within New York. Through this development, ACV has shown across New York, from the Asia Society on the Upper East Side, to the Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) in Lower Manhattan. 

Peter Chow, Danny Yung, Thomas Tam, and Christine Choy are the amazing media activists we have to thank for the establishment of CineVue, ACV’s in-house Asian American media arts journal. As a grassroots organization, we are more than proud to highlight films with grit, uniqueness, and representation for minority communities. H.P. Mendoza’s FRUIT FLY is an encapsulation of those core values. In screening this film, we hope to emphasize how important Filipino stories are in the media. FRUIT FLY is celebrating its 15th anniversary and is noted as one of the best representations of the Asian American LGBTQ+ community. Mendoza’s work earned him Best Narrative Feature at CAAM (formerly known as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival) (2009), Best Overall Film at the Fort Worth LGBT Film Festival (2009), the Rising Star Award at the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (2009), and many more. With a plotline as unique as this one, it stands out among many other films during this period. 

In 2009, there was already representation of the LGBTQ+ community, with films like A SINGLE MAN (2009) and JUST FRIENDS (2009), which gained attention for their portrayal of gay characters. It was also a year of increased visibility; the LGBTQ+ themes were subtle, but hinted at the growing number of LGBTQ+ characters in media. 

Nevertheless, there were also challenges to LGBTQ+ representation during this period. These, characters lacked depth in their stories, resulting in one-dimensional portrayals of their journeys. In addition, there was a lack of diversity—LGBTQ+ representation in film was predominantly white and male, highlighting the glaring need for more diverse, intersectional storytelling. 

H.P. Mendoza’s FRUIT FLY was a film that defied all odds. With a multi-dimensional woman of color as the lead, this story holds a lot of weight. Bethesda, a Filipino performance artist, moves to San Francisco to work on her newest art piece that leads into a journey of searching for her biological mother. During this search, she goes on a voyage of self-discovery with her sexual identity. 

Lead actress L.A. Renigen’s experiences with discrimination served as Mendoza’s inspiration. While touring the festival circuit with her, Mendoza learned that, while at gay bars, Renigen would often get called a fruit fly. Upon hearing of this experience, Mendoza went on to write and develop the movie, FRUIT FLY, as it is today.

Guerilla storytelling is one of the many bricks of foundation within this narrative. With no funding and a lot of heart, it showcases the need for this story and that is more than enough. Grit and determination are key factors as well. They are the heart of ACV and illustrate the lengths we’ll go in order to tell these stories, no matter what it takes. 

FRUIT FLY  is also a movie-musical, written and composed by Mendoza himself. Seeing an Asian director and composer is a rarity within the film industry, so seeing Mendoza in these rolesis a powerful step within the right direction for the Asian American community. This proves that we can depict more than just the narratives that have been put on us for the past decades. We can be creative and use it as a tool to empower our community. 

Now, so many things have changed for Filipino and queer filmmakers. One example is CHANGING PARTNERS (2017), directed by Dan Villegas, a Filipino independent musical drama about two pairs of gender-bent couples who portray different versions of themselves. This film also serves as an example of how Filipino film has started accepting the LGBTQ+ community, allowing CHANGING PARTNERS to be told and showcased to the world. 

Isabel Sandoval became a breakout voice with SEÑIORITA (2011), APARISYON (2012), and later LINGUA FRANCA (2019), which premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where she was the first trans woman of color to direct and star in a Venice entry. In the Philippines, filmmakers like Samantha Lee (BAKA BUKAS, BILLIE AND EMMA) created wholesome, modern queer films aimed at Gen Z, showing queerness as ordinary and joyful, not tragic. The Filipino BL (Boys’ Love) wave —around 2020, spurred by lockdowns and Thai BL imports—exploded with shows like Gameboys and Gaya sa Pelikula, made by queer creatives.

In the 15 years since FRUIT FLY’s quiet arrival, the landscape for queer and Filipino filmmakers has changed. But what hasn’t changed and what makes this film continue to matter, is why it was made, how it was made, and who it was for.

FRUIT FLY is not just a cult film, it’s a cultural artifact. Not because it had sweeping reach at its debut, but because it refused to ask permission. Because it chose playfulness over pity, honesty over polish, and music over melodrama in a time when queer Asian American films were largely defined by trauma, coming-out stories, or silence.

ACV is screening the re-released, sing-along version of H.P. Mendoza’s FRUIT FLY, which speaks on the importance of audience engagement. As a community, we want to celebrate queer joy within a safe space for all, especially when many queer stories are still centered around pain. Creating collective memories with one another is very important to ACV and, as we screen this re-released sing-along version of the cult classic, FRUIT FLY, we wanted all of you to sing along with us, creating a memory that will last lifetimes. Finally, we wanted to re-frame engagement. This is not just a movie you watch on your laptop at home; it‘s one you echo, perform, and own as a community. 

In an era where the word “representation” has turned into a buzzword for the film community, we wanted to give you the chance to experience what true, indie, queer cinema looks like. It’s loud, messy, and unapologetically weird, but built from a foundation of love. 

Discrimination lies at the heart of global hatred, but the emergence of FRUIT FLY and ACV’s other powerful pieces of media demonstrates that, despite the hate directed at people of color, we can rise above it. These platforms prove that,  by centering our own stories, we can build safe spaces and reclaim our narrative through creativity, resilience, and community.

FRUIT FLY is a reminder that sometimes the longest lasting art doesn’t come from institutional approval, it comes from necessity, hunger, and joy. In 2009, it gave queer Filipino audiences something rare: a chance to laugh at ourselves, dance in our contradictions, and sing our way through identity.

In 2025, that still feels radical.

Living between worlds

When I was about eight years old, my mum and I went to a caa caan teng – the Cantonese name for a Hong Kong style diner – for a quick meal. These restaurants were the only places where I could grasp at momentary glimpses of the bustling Hong Kong streets; whiffs of the mind-boggling combination of freshly baked egg tarts and wet mortar;  echoes of the explicitly sarcastic (and sometimes sadistic), fast-paced conversations… 

When we were waiting for our food, this pungent, week-old seafood stench shot its way up my nostrils, and I couldn’t help but ask my mum in Cantonese, 

“Do you think a garbage truck just passed by here? Why is it so stinky?”

Half the restaurant turned their heads towards our booth. My mum chuckled (mind you, her ears were bright red) as she explained that it was in fact the smell of a shrimp paste signature to Hong Kong cuisine. In hindsight, I realize the irony of how I, who treated the caa caan teng as a spectacle, became the spectacle instead. 

As I grew older, my identity crisis as a second generation Hong Konger Canadian became a heavier burden. While Hong Kong cuisine is fairly accessible in Vancouver, other cultural resources and social opportunities specifically for diasporic Hong Kongers were much rarer. 

Growing up, I never had a Hong Kong film movie-going experience. However, it wasn’t just the screenings that were out of grasp; the content of Hong Kong films in the late 2000s and early 2010s made the city itself feel foreign. The formulaic, fantastical action features solidified the feeling that I was forever going to have to look at Hong Kong through a stained glass wall that would distort reality and exacerbate my identity crisis as a second generation Hong Konger Canadian. I preferred watching Stephen Chow’s comedy films from the 80s and 90s, but still, these films couldn’t tune me  into the city’s present day rhythm. 

The current state of Hong Kong cinema 

Hong Kong’s film industry is best known for its 70s and 80s era, when both its arthouse (like  Wong Kar-Wai’s works) and action films (John Woo’s “A Better Tomorrow”) gained international recognition. Unfortunately, due to a plethora of reasons including digital piracy, actors seeking international opportunities, triads monopolizing the industry, and flaws in filmmaking hierarchy, the industry experienced a steep decline in box office receipts after the 90s.

 In recent years, however, the industry’s status quo is being challenged by ‘new blood’ – an up-and-coming generation of filmmakers taking steps to explore bold topics and utilize unconventional filmmaking techniques. These filmmakers seem to be driven by a new sense of dignity for creative expression, as well as a desire to discuss Hong Kong’s socio-political issues. 

An open door

For diasporic Hong Kongers, these films may provide a door to walk through rather than a stained glass wall. Many diaspora individuals say that they are more enthusiastic about and inclined to watch Hong Kong films in theaters these past few years as the stories and movie-going experiences help retain their sense of belonging to Hong Kong. For those whose families have been in North America for more than two generations, it may be less about nostalgia and more about the opportunity to learn about one’s ethnic identity. Samantha Ma – a second-generation individual  – explained that because their Hong Kong-born peers have deeper connections to the city in comparison, watching films that engage in themes of immigration, displacement, and identity politics helps her develop her own understanding of Hong Kong.

Some expressed that sharing the movie-going experience with friends and family has created unexpected bonding opportunities. Haley – another  recent immigrant – explained how she recently brought her mother-in-law to watch the Hong Kong film, “Mama’s Affair.”

“She has immigrated here for many years, but has never watched a film in theaters before,” she said. “Since it was the first movie going experience of her life and the film’s premise is about familial relationships, it was a particularly meaningful experience for me.”

Other Hong Kongers, like Colette Tung, a college student and recent immigrant from Hong Kong, explained that Hong Kong films create cultural references to incorporate into “daily conversations with friends because the experiences of the characters in the movies are relatable…” Besides creating common ground between friends, film pop culture can also foster connections amongst strangers. 

New Hong Kong filmmakers & Their Storytelling 

A contemporary wave of Hong Kong films that merely spurred a light commotion in the late 2010’s is garnering much anticipation in the last few years. Since there has been an influx of Hong Kongers moving to North American cities – especially in Canada, where as of April 2023, more than 3,000 Hong Kongers have been granted permanent residence – and the space for expression in Hong Kong is narrowing, creative and sincere storytelling are a source of inspiration and hope for the diaspora. Regardless of the generation of the Hong Konger Canadian or American, international screenings of these films provide an alternative platform for the diaspora to develop their collective identities.

Such films that received positive reception from diasporic Hong Kongers are  “Twilight’s Kiss,” “A Light Never Goes Out,” and  “In Broad Daylight,” amongst others. While these films embody various themes and genres, they all gained traction because they poignantly illustrate socially and culturally-specific issues. 

‘Twilight’s Kiss’

“Twilight’s Kiss,” directed by Ray Yeung, dives into a specific marginalized and underrepresented community in Hong Kong. Inspired by the book, “Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten,” Yeung, said he wanted to create a film about already-married men who are now finding the courage to explore their sexual identities in a hybrid landscape much more accepting of queer individuals, but for the most part, still restrained by traditional social views. 

Yeung’s direction is beautifully lyrical. Like an onion, you can peel and peel, and there will still be more to digest and decipher. For example, there are scenes at the start and towards the end of the film dedicated to Pak – a gay man who has to choose between his new found love and loyalty to his family – meticulously cleaning his taxi. Together, they create a particularly memorable metaphor symbolic of his decision to give up on sensual exploration and self-acceptance when he became a taxi driver to support his family decades ago. 

“The taxi symbolizes the values and the life led by many Hong Kongers who are now in their 70s and 80s. They are amongst those who fled to Hong Kong as migrants and refugees,” Yeung explained. “Thus, work and financial stability was and always has been their top priority. One can see how in these sorts of circumstances, along with the homophobia throughout most of the 20th century and the traditional Chinese values regarding the importance of family, exploring one’s sexual identity was very much a luxury many couldn’t afford.” 

Yet, in the present day, being a taxi driver makes rendezvous with the man Pak loves possible.  The duality of his existence depicts the fractures within the identities of this marginalized Queer community. In the bigger picture, however, the historical context, cultural norms and bittersweetness of love makes the story relatable for many beyond those who identify within this community. 

‘A Light Never Goes Out’ 

Besides the iconic egg tarts, financial district skyscrapers, and the Lion Rock mountain, Hong Kong is also known for its neon signs. For several decades, these signs created a tunnel of lights over Hong Kong’s urban streets, serving both function and aesthetic. For small business owners, neon signs are one of their most valuable assets because they embody “the soul of a [the] business” when the next generation takes over. For the international community, neon signs’ cyberpunk aesthetic defined Hong Kong’s identity.  

In recent years, however, government crackdown and cheaper alternatives have caused the gradual disappearance of these iconic signs, draining the city’s vibrancy. “A Light Never Goes Out” follows the journey of a late neon sign crafter’s wife and apprentice as they scramble to keep the crafter’s business afloat whilst finishing his last project on his behalf.  As they delve deeper into the crafter’s work, the pair discover that the crafter fostered a tight-knit community through the decades of manufacturing signs for local businesses– they realize that with the gradual retirement and passings of these crafters, not only does the vibrancy of their communities dissipate, but with it the kindness, passion, and dedication that defined an entire generation of Hong Kongers. 

“I like how [“A Light Never Goes Out”] portrays the old Hong Kong and how the older generation are trying to preserve their memories and memories of Hong Kong,” explains Colette. “[It’s] really touching considering that a lot of things like symbols and values in Hong Kong are vanishing.” This story is about more than the preservation of neon signs; it sheds light on the many changes the city has undergone in the past few decades, allowing Hong Kongers to reminisce the “good days” and feel “a sense of urgency” as Cardin Chan, general manager of the non-profit  neon-sign collector Tetra Neon Exchange explained in their interview with The Guardian.  

‘In Broad Daylight’ 

Going to see “In Broad Daylight” at the Vancouver International Film Festival was one of my top “goosebump inducing” experiences. Never had I seen a theater packed to the brim with Hong Kongers and Hong Kong film enthusiasts like this theater was. Conversations in Cantonese, English, and Chinglish bubbled pre-screening and post-screening during the Q&A where the director Lawrence Kwan Chun Kan interacted with the audience.  

The film itself was no less breathtaking than the audience turnout. “In Broad Daylight,” inspired by a true event reported in 2016, follows a jaded journalist as she investigates the corruption and abuse happening in a private disabled care home facility in Hong Kong. In a largely pragmatic and apathetic city where the growing lower class hustle to put food on the table, the Christian middle class are accustomed to complacency, the ultra rich minority exploit the capitalist system, and the government is narrowing the capacity for expression, the reporter questions the ethics of her investigation when exposing the truth ends up hurting the marginalized residents at the care home. She asks her colleague, “In 10 years, do you think there will still be journalists?” In 2024 – nine years after the story takes place – this is a question that many Hong Kongers may possibly have an answer to.  

Kan’s film illustrates a hierarchy of social issues. The central topic of Hong Kong’s care home privatization and corruption serves as a foundation to discuss larger institutional issues embedded in the city’s system and exacerbated by autocratization. While the film does not shy away from exposing society’s ugliness, the relationships kindled between the journalist and the care home’s residents is a silver lining that shows how genuine kindness – although rare – still exists and is capable of liberating those who have been numbed by injustice. 

However diverse the discourse are in these three films, they do not nearly exhaust the range of stories being told by the “new blood.” Hong Kong cinema will never return to its Golden Age, but even better, it’s pioneering a path very much needed by Hong Kongers today.  

Lack Of Accessibility 

For Hong Kongers who may have moved away from, been displaced, or were born and raised away from Hong Kong, Hong Kong films are a kind of cultural expression; the stories and the movie going experiences have potential to aid Hong Kongers in their individual and collective identity building and hopefully one day help them understand what “living between worlds” is for themselves.    

Unfortunately, accessibility remains an issue. In Vancouver, for example, cinemas like the Rickshaw Theatre and The Imperial Theatre – which were once owned by the major Hong Kong production companies – screened many Hong Kong films in the mid-20th century. Today, however, there are only two theaters in the entire Vancouver Lower Mainland that screen Hong Kong films, not to mention the limited selection. While there are organizations like CanMan and VSSDM that hold private screenings, individuals still miss out on movie-going opportunities due to lack of promotion and the limited ticket availability. 

In the United States, for films like “In Broad Daylight” that put an emphasis on digital marketing and have received positive box office numbers, several states will have screenings. However, the screening times are usually fairly short. Illume Films’ – a social media platform dedicated to promoting Hong Kong films in Canada and the United States – post shows that 12 locations would be screening In Broad Daylight. A couple of weeks later they would announce the last day of screenings would be December 2.       

Many have expressed that the challenges that come with getting access to a Hong Kong film screening has been discouraging. Haley noted, “When I studied in Vancouver as a high schooler, there used to be a theater at Crystal Mall that focused on screening Hong Kong films, but now it has been taken down and rebuilt as a Best Buy. Even then, not all Hong Kong films were screened. Today, I see that many Hong Kong films are being screened locally, but the films are in theaters for a very short period of time. It’s unfortunate, but I understand that the market might not be big enough.”

Another recent immigrant, Karen Ma, explained that there were no theaters within close vicinity to where she lived that screened Hong Kong films, so the long commute can be discouraging. “But something’s better than nothing. At the end of the day, we are living in a foreign place, so when we watch something that is produced in Hong Kong, it feels like my sense of belonging is being retained by the connection that is created between Hong Kongers and the city through these experiences.”

That being said, efforts are being made to increase the visibility of Hong Kong films. Metrograph, a New York based entertainment company, was the first to release Fruit Chan’s “Made In Hong Kong” in America. The company also has an online journal dedicated to discussing films through interviews, columns, essays, and excerpts. Many Hong Kong films, directors, actresses, and actors have been featured, from Lawrence Lau’s “Spacked Out” to Patrick Tam’s “Nomad,” to the wardrobe of iconic pop star Anita Mui –  the list continues. Together, these pieces comment on the Hong Kong film industry and socio-political issues spanning several decades. 

As well, AAIFF screened Lo Lam’s short “Hei, I’m Home” at their 46th festival, while Asian Pop-up Cinema screened several Hong Kong films at their festival last year, including Nick Cheuk’s “Time Still Turns the Pages.” Hong Kong films need more of these opportunities. The question is, what can our community do to make these films more readily available to everyone? 

When I was about eight years old, my mum and I went to a caa caan teng – the Cantonese name for a Hong Kong style diner – for a quick meal. These restaurants were the only places where I could grasp at momentary glimpses of the bustling Hong Kong streets; whiffs of the mind-boggling combination of freshly baked egg tarts and wet mortar;  echoes of the explicitly sarcastic (and sometimes sadistic), fast-paced conversations… 

When we were waiting for our food, this pungent, week-old seafood stench shot its way up my nostrils, and I couldn’t help but ask my mum in Cantonese, 

“Do you think a garbage truck just passed by here? Why is it so stinky?”

Half the restaurant turned their heads towards our booth. My mum chuckled (mind you, her ears were bright red) as she explained that it was in fact the smell of a shrimp paste signature to Hong Kong cuisine. In hindsight, I realize the irony of how I, who treated the caa caan teng as a spectacle, became the spectacle instead. 

As I grew older, my identity crisis as a second generation Hong Konger Canadian became a heavier burden. While Hong Kong cuisine is fairly accessible in Vancouver, other cultural resources and social opportunities specifically for diasporic Hong Kongers were much rarer. 

Growing up, I never had a Hong Kong film movie-going experience. However, it wasn’t just the screenings that were out of grasp; the content of Hong Kong films in the late 2000s and early 2010s made the city itself feel foreign. The formulaic, fantastical action features solidified the feeling that I was forever going to have to look at Hong Kong through a stained glass wall that would distort reality and exacerbate my identity crisis as a second generation Hong Konger Canadian. I preferred watching Stephen Chow’s comedy films from the 80s and 90s, but still, these films couldn’t tune me  into the city’s present day rhythm. 

The current state of Hong Kong cinema 

Hong Kong’s film industry is best known for its 70s and 80s era, when both its arthouse (like  Wong Kar-Wai’s works) and action films (John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow, for instance) gained international recognition. Unfortunately, due to a plethora of reasons including digital piracy, actors seeking international opportunities, triads monopolizing the industry, and flaws in filmmaking hierarchy, the industry experienced a steep decline in box office receipts after the 90s.

 In recent years, however, the industry’s status quo is being challenged by ‘new blood’ – an up-and-coming generation of filmmakers taking steps to explore bold topics and utilize unconventional filmmaking techniques. These filmmakers seem to be driven by a new sense of dignity for creative expression, as well as a desire to discuss Hong Kong’s socio-political issues. 

An open door

For diasporic Hong Kongers, these films may provide a door to walk through rather than a stained glass wall. Many diaspora individuals say that they are more enthusiastic about and inclined to watch Hong Kong films in theaters these past few years as the stories and movie-going experiences help retain their sense of belonging to Hong Kong. For those whose families have been in North America for more than two generations, it may be less about nostalgia and more about the opportunity to learn about one’s ethnic identity. Samantha Ma – a second-generation individual  – explained that because their Hong Kong-born peers have deeper connections to the city in comparison, watching films that engage in themes of immigration, displacement, and identity politics helps her develop her own understanding of Hong Kong.

Some expressed that sharing the movie-going experience with friends and family has created unexpected bonding opportunities. Haley – another  recent immigrant – explained how she recently brought her mother-in-law to watch the Hong Kong film, “Mama’s Affair.”

 “She has immigrated here for many years, but has never watched a film in theaters before,” she said. “Since it was the first movie going experience of her life and the film’s premise is about familial relationships, it was a particularly meaningful experience for me.”

Other Hong Kongers, like Colette Tung, a college student and recent immigrant from Hong Kong, explained that Hong Kong films create cultural references to incorporate into “daily conversations with friends because the experiences of the characters in the movies are relatable…”   Besides creating common ground between friends, film pop culture can also foster connections amongst strangers. 

New Hong Kong filmmakers & Their Storytelling 

A contemporary wave of Hong Kong films that merely spurred a light commotion in the late 2010’s is garnering much anticipation in the last few years. Since there has been an influx of Hong Kongers moving to North American cities – especially in Canada, where as of April 2023, 3122 Hong Kongers have been granted permanent residence – and the space for expression in Hong Kong is narrowing, creative and sincere storytelling are a source of inspiration and hope for the diaspora.  . Regardless of the generation of the Hong Konger Canadian or American, international screenings of these films provide an alternative platform for the diaspora to develop their collective identities.

Such films that received positive reception from diasporic Hong Kongers are  “Twilight’s Kiss,” “A Light Never Goes Out,” and  “In Broad Daylight,” amongst others. While these films embody various themes and genres, they all gained traction because they poignantly illustrate socially and culturally-specific issues. 

“Twilight’s Kiss.”

“Twilight’s Kiss,” directed by Ray Yeung, dives into a specific marginalized and underrepresented community in Hong Kong. Inspired by the book, “Oral Histories of Older Gay Men in Hong Kong: Unspoken but Unforgotten,” Yeung, said he wanted to create a film about already-married men who are now finding the courage to explore their sexual identities in a hybrid landscape much more accepting of queer individuals, but for the most part, still restrained by traditional social views. 

Yeung’s direction is beautifully lyrical. Like an onion, you can peel and peel, and there will still be more to digest and decipher. For example, there are scenes at the start and towards the end of the film dedicated to Pak – a gay man who has to choose between his new found love and loyalty to his family – meticulously cleaning his taxi. Together, they create a particularly memorable metaphor symbolic of his decision to give up on sensual exploration and self-acceptance when he became a taxi driver to support his family decades ago. 

“The taxi symbolizes the values and the life led by many Hong Kongers who are now in their 70s and 80s. They are amongst those who fled to Hong Kong as migrants and refugees,” Yeung explained. “Thus, work and financial stability was and always has been their top priority. One can see how in these sorts of circumstances, along with the homophobia throughout most of the 20th century and the traditional Chinese values regarding the importance of family, exploring one’s sexual identity was very much a luxury many couldn’t afford.” 

Yet, in the present day, being a taxi driver makes rendezvous with the man Pak loves possible.  The duality of his existence depicts the fractures within the identities of this marginalized Queer community. In the bigger picture, however, the historical context, cultural norms and bittersweetness of love makes the story relatable for many beyond those who identify within this community. 

A Light Never Goes Out 

Besides the iconic egg tarts, financial district skyscrapers, and the Lion Rock mountain, Hong Kong is also known for its neon signs. For several decades, these signs created a tunnel of lights over Hong Kong’s urban streets, serving both function and aesthetic. For small business owners, neon signs are one of their most valuable assets because they embody “the soul of a [the] business” when the next generation takes over. For the international community, neon signs’ cyberpunk aesthetic defined Hong Kong’s identity.  

In recent years, however, government crackdown and cheaper alternatives have caused the gradual disappearance of these iconic signs, draining the city’s vibrancy. “A Light Never Goes Out” follows the journey of a late neon sign crafter’s wife and apprentice as they scramble to keep the crafter’s business afloat whilst finishing his last project on his behalf.  As they delve deeper into the crafter’s work, the pair discover that the crafter fostered a tight-knit community through the decades of manufacturing signs for local businesses– they realize that with the gradual retirement and passings of these crafters, not only does the vibrancy of their communities dissipate, but with it the kindness, passion, and dedication that defined an entire generation of Hong Kongers. 

“I like how [“A Light Never Goes Out”] portrays the old Hong Kong and how the older generation are trying to preserve their memories and memories of Hong Kong,” explains Colette. “[It’s] really touching considering that a lot of things like symbols and values in Hong Kong are vanishing.” This story is about more than the preservation of neon signs; it sheds light on the many changes the city has undergone in the past few decades, allowing Hong Kongers to reminisce the “good days” and feel “a sense of urgency” as Cardin Chan, general manager of the non-profit  neon-sign collector Tetra Neon Exchange explained in their interview with The Guardian.  

In Broad Daylight 

Going to see “In Broad Daylight” at the Vancouver International Film Festival was one of my top “goosebump inducing” experiences. Never had I seen a theater packed to the brim with Hong Kongers and Hong Kong film enthusiasts like this theater was. Conversations in Cantonese, English, and Chinglish bubbled pre-screening and post-screening during the Q&A where the director Lawrence Kwan Chun Kan interacted with the audience.  

The film itself was no less breathtaking than the audience turnout. “In Broad Daylight”, inspired by a true event reported in 2016, follows a jaded journalist as she investigates the corruption and abuse happening in a private disabled care home facility in Hong Kong. In a largely pragmatic and apathetic city where the growing lower class hustle to put food on the table, the Christian middle class are accustomed to complacency, the ultra rich minority exploit the capitalist system, and the government is narrowing the capacity for expression, the reporter questions the ethics of her investigation when exposing the truth ends up hurting the marginalized residents at the care home. She asks her colleague, “In 10 years, do you think there will still be journalists?” In 2024– nine 9years after the story takes place – this is a question that many Hong Kongers may possibly have an answer to.  

Kan’s film illustrates a hierarchy of social issues. The central topic of Hong Kong’s care home privatization and corruption serves as a foundation to discuss larger institutional issues embedded in the city’s system and exacerbated by autocratization. While the film does not shy away from exposing society’s ugliness, the relationships kindled between the journalist and the care home’s residents is a silver lining that shows how genuine kindness – although rare – still exists and is capable of liberating those who have been numbed by injustice. 

However diverse the discourse are in these three films, they do not nearly exhaust the range of stories being told by the “new blood.”. Hong Kong cinema will never return to its Golden Age, but even better, it’s pioneering a path very much needed by Hong Kongers today.  

Lack Of Accessibility 

For Hong Kongers who may have moved away from, been displaced, or were born and raised away from Hong Kong, Hong Kong films are a kind of cultural expression; the stories and the movie going experiences have potential to aid Hong Kongers in their individual and collective identity building and hopefully one day help them understand what “living between worlds” is for themselves.    

Unfortunately, accessibility remains an issue. In Vancouver, for example, cinemas like the Rickshaw Theatre and The Imperial Theatre – which were once owned by the major Hong Kong production companies – screened many Hong Kong films in the mid-20th century. Today, however, there are only two theaters in the entire Vancouver Lower Mainland that screen Hong Kong films, not to mention the limited selection. While there are organizations like CanMan and VSSDM that hold private screenings, individuals still miss out on movie-going opportunities due to lack of promotion and the limited ticket availability. 

In the United States, for films like In Broad Daylight that puts an emphasis on digital marketing and has received positive box office numbers, several states will have screenings. However, the screening times are usually fairly short. Illume Films’ – a social media platform dedicated to promoting Hong Kong films in Canada and the United States – post shows that 12 locations would be screening In Broad Daylight. A couple of weeks later they would announce the last day of screenings would be December 21st.       

Many have expressed that the challenges that come with getting access to a Hong Kong film screening has been discouraging. Haley  noted, “When I studied in Vancouver as a high schooler, there used to be a theater at Crystal Mall that focused on screening Hong Kong films, but now it has been taken down and rebuilt as a Best Buy. Even then, not all Hong Kong films were screened. Today, I see that many Hong Kong films are being screened locally, but the films are in theaters for a very short period of time. It’s unfortunate, but I understand that the market might not be big enough.”

Another recent immigrant, Karen Ma, explained that there were no theaters within close vicinity to where she lived that screened Hong Kong films, so the long commute can be discouraging. “But something’s better than nothing. At the end of the day, we are living in a foreign place, so when we watch something that is produced in Hong Kong, it feels like my sense of belonging is being retained by the connection that is created between Hong Kongers and the city through these experiences.”

That being said, efforts are being made to increase the visibility of Hong Kong films. Metrograph, a New York based entertainment company, was the first to release Fruit Chan’s Made In Hong Kong in America. The company also has an online journal dedicated to discussing films through interviews, columns, essays, and excerpts. Many Hong Kong films, directors, actresses, and actors have been featured, from Lawrence Lau’s Spacked Out to Patrick Tam’s Nomad, to the wardrobe of iconic pop star Anita Mui –  the list continues. Together, these pieces comment on the Hong Kong film industry and socio-political issues spanning several decades. 
As well, AAIFF screened Lo Lam’s short Hei, I’m Home at their 46th festival, while Asian Pop-up Cinema screened several Hong Kong films at their festival last year, including Nick Cheuk’s Time Still Turns the Pages. Hong Kong films need more of these opportunities. The question is, what can our community do to make these films more readily available to everyone?

On November 2, 1984, Rolland Joffe’s “The Killing Fields” hit theaters in the UK. The film, which tells the true story of two journalists — Cambodian Dith Pran and American Sydney Schanberg — covering the Cambodian Civil War and subsequent genocide, was a critical darling, and won three Oscars. Most notably, “Best Supporting Actor” for Dr. Haing S Ngor, who played Pran, and who’d never acted beforehand. However, in the 40 years since its release, the film, the true story, and Ngor have faded from public consciousness. This should be remedied. Not only does the film still work, but it still holds great significance for the Cambodian diaspora.

For some, like Paul Chhorm, who survived the genocide himself, it’s the first movie they ever saw. As he explained to me when I visited the National Cambodian Heritage Museum and Killing Fields Memorial in Chicago, “‘The Killing Fields’ is the first movie I saw in my life […] so it was pretty moving in terms of the storyline. And even though I was a child, it just reflected all the hardships that a child can see, like hunger, especially, and the corpses.”

His sentiments were echoed by another survivor, Robert Chau, who was 16 when the genocide ended, and who explained over email, “[the film] takes me back to a brutal time in my life I tried to forget. For some people it’s just entertainment. For me, I actually lived it.” Even the grandchildren of survivors, like Avian Munoz, find the film difficult to watch. As he clarified over email, “I have watched the film three times and it always keeps me awake at night for weeks.”

As difficult as the movie is to watch, some Cambodians find it an effective means of processing their trauma, and have even turned viewing it into a ritual. One member of the diaspora from Greater Philadelphia, Chaiya, whose parents had to flee the country in the 70s, described how the film’s journalistic format allows his family to work through their pain. As he explained in an email interview, “This was probably the only movie my parents could watch because of the format.” And another member of the community from Lowell, Monika, who lost both grandparents and her older sister to the genocide, informed me of how some Cambodians view the picture almost religiously. “One of my mutuals on Letterboxd, [another Khmer woman],” she explained over email, “watches the movie every year.”

This flick is special, not just in terms of having an Asian lead, or telling a little-known story in the West, but in terms of a unique structure that still holds up. To understand why, though, we need to go over some history.

In 1975, the Communist Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, seized control of Cambodia, and, over the next four years, they carried out one of the worst genocides in history, killing over a million people. Some estimates put the death toll as high as 3 million. Everyone within Cambodia’s borders was impacted, including a gynecologist named Haing Ngor, and a journalist named Dith Pran. They didn’t know each other yet, but they suffered many of the same hardships. In time, their fates would become intertwined. In 1979, both men fled to Thailand, and from there, they made their way to the United States. There, Pran reunited with his wife and children, and became a photographer for the New York Times. Ngor, for his part, would be unable to resume his medical practice, and would never remarry.

By the early 80s, Pran’s story had become so well-known that producer David Putnam and director Roland Joffe wanted to adapt it to film. They even wanted to call it “The Killing Fields,” a term that Pran himself coined to describe the horrors he’d seen. This is where Ngor re-enters the picture. Despite having never acted, he was spotted at a Cambodian wedding in Los Angeles in 1983 by the film’s casting director, and asked to star in the movie. While Ngor wasn’t initially interested, he decided that this would be a chance to tell his country’s story, and bring attention and aid to those still suffering. 

The 1980s saw the release of several Vietnam War-related films, including “Platoon,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” and “Born on the Fourth of July.”  Some filmmakers, like the people behind the “Missing In Action” and “Rambo” franchises, sought to give America its mojo back. Others, like Oliver Stone and Brian De Palma, tried to expose Americans’ brutality. But one thing none of these films did was consider the perspective of the Vietnamese or Cambodians, who were almost always reduced to the role of incoherent victims. And few, if any, of these movies provided exposition on why the war began, or what its long term consequences were. As Munoz put it, “Most Americans have very little understanding of the series of administrative blunders that led to the Vietnam War, and an even poorer understanding of how that directly led to the Cambodian genocide.” That’s why “The Killing Fields” is so unique. Not only does it address how American actions in Vietnam destabilized Cambodia, but Haing Ngor is unquestionably the lead. And he’s absolutely terrific, displaying both nuance and confidence on screen.

This flick doesn’t work without Ngor, and his importance goes beyond just giving a great performance. He gave a face to the Cambodian diaspora, and many, like Chau, watched the film for him. As he explained over email, “I watched [the movie] when it first came out because [Ngor] was a friend I knew through the Khmer community.” And Ngor would repay his community’s support. Not only did he work as a counselor at a refugee resettlement center in LA, but he also built an elementary school and operated a small sawmill that provided jobs for local families. One can only imagine the good he could have done, and the other great performances he could have given. Alas, Haing Ngor was murdered on February 25, 1996 in a robbery outside his home in L.A. He was only 55.

Beyond the picture’s novelty as a mainstream movie with an Asian lead, the filmmaking feels very modern. “The Killing Fields” lacks a lot of the setup and melodrama found in Hollywood action movies of the era. Aside from 40 seconds of VO at the beginning, which explains that the fighting in Vietnam spilled into Cambodia, you get no exposition on the country, the characters, or the war. Instead, you’re thrown right in the deep end, with Schamburg and Pran going up river to see an area that’s been bombed. And because several scenes lack dialogue, much greater emphasis is placed on visual storytelling.

The movie feels like a newsreel, and that quasi-documentary style makes the horrors more digestible. Chaiya found the film easier to watch than other flicks about the genocide, saying, “[My friends and family] enjoyed the movie being told from a journalist’s perspective … The movie ‘First They Killed My Father’ on Netflix was a movie that none of my parents wanted to watch. [That] felt like it was an exact POV of the events, which my parents did not want to relive.” 

Now, by virtue of being just one film with just one story, “The Killing Fields” isn’t a perfect representation of Cambodian people or culture. You don’t see Theravada Buddhism being practiced. You don’t see people cooking fish amok. You don’t see the complex web of relationships between the different factions in Cambodia, and countries like China and Vietnam. And as Munoz noted, women are almost entirely absent from the story. “There are many great untold stories of how women survived and managed to save their families and loved ones,” Munoz said. A sentiment shared by Eng Tang, who survived the genocide herself, and who declared over email, “There are thousands of other experiences and important stories that still need to be told.”

All of this might explain why, when asked if the movie was a good representation of Cambodia, Chaiya responded “I don’t think it’s a good representation of Cambodian people, but it paints a horrific picture of that point in the country’s history for sure.”

Chau echoed these sentiments, but was quick to add, “​​Any kind of representation or education of the Khmer Rouge is good, so maybe people would learn and so that it wouldn’t happen again.”

It’s been 40 years since “The Killing Fields” first hit theaters, and both the film and the plight of Cambodia have largely faded from public memory. Which is wrong, because history doesn’t just stop. Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge might be gone, but their impact is still being felt. As Chau explained, “There is a huge culture of mistrust and jealousy in my generation because many survivors my age are still stuck in the past and still internally feel we are at war.” 

Munoz noted how he’s “used to the fact that most people who know about Cambodians only know about us in the context of those four years of genocide.” And as Monika so eloquently put it, “We’re a country and a people that have been through and survived a lot and were going to be in a process of rebuilding and reclaiming our dignity and our sovereignty **forever**.” All of this has to change, and, thankfully, there have been efforts made by the diaspora to address, and move forward, from the genocide.

Eng Tang is currently in the process of writing her memoir, “so my family’s story of loss and survival in the Killing Fields will finally get the recognition it deserves.”  Robert and his daughter, Dorothy, created the “Death In Cambodia, Life in America” podcast to share his, and other survivors’, experiences. And together with Dr. Sochanvimean Vannavuth, Dorothy started “Khmer Courageous Conversations,” a safe, community process group for Cambodian people to talk about hard topics under the supervision of a clinical, licensed therapist.

It’ll be a long, slow process, but the Khmer community will recover. And someday, hopefully, they’ll be able to leave “The Killing Fields” behind.

In curating this year’s archival program, programmer Hai-Li Kong sought to explore the limitless possibilities of film as a medium, selecting works that push the boundaries of how film can be manipulated and reimagined. “The goal was to recapture the pioneering energy that marked the early days of AAIFF by revisiting films that were first showcased during that period,” Kong noted, “In addition to these early works, we also include two films made in 2023.” By pairing these older films with contemporary ones, Kong emphasized that past works are not merely nostalgic curios; rather, they remain vibrant and continue to inform and engage with the artistic endeavors of today’s filmmakers.

Film As A Medium: 24 Frame Per Second (1978) and Eiga-Zuke (1994) 

Director Al Wong uses extensive burning and writing in “24 Frame Per Second.” Everything seems intriguing and visually stimulating, yet it carries a powerful undertone of aggression. The shots written with pencil, marker, and brush give a perspective similar to that of the paper, a passive “being written upon” viewpoint. The entire film dismantled the illusion of continuity and integrity: the close-ups of various body parts deconstructing the wholeness of the body, and the burns appear to move like an animated cartoon due to the way movies show 24 pictures every second. 

Sean Morijiro Sunada O’Gara uses Japanese pickling methods to create “Eiga-Zuke,” transforming the piece into a form of tsukemono. Much like pickles need time to ferment and develop their flavor, “Eiga-Zuke” highlights the Japanese tradition of waiting and preservation. This approach adds a unique depth to the work, especially when contrasted with modern society’s preference for quick and immediate results.

Reimagined: White Calligraphy, Re-Read (2010) and To Serve The People (1979)

Originally made in 1967 as “White Calligraphy,” “White Calligraphy, Re-Read” is a remixed and shortened version that director Takahiko Iimura developed in 2010. To initiate an experience unlike traditional cinema, Iimura’s work questioned and dismantled the semiotics of video and its relationship to the viewer. What makes a film experience, and what makes a reading experience? Iimura provoked the question by scratching characters from “Kojiki” (“Records of Ancient Matters”), an 8th century Japanese text about the creation of the world, onto the frames of 16mm black leader. 

Danny Yung’s “To Serve The People” features only five distinct Chinese characters for the phrase “為人民服務” (“wèi rénmín fúwù”), which are superimposed in various combinations throughout the film. Introduced by Mao, this slogan embodies the core spirit of the Chinese Communist Party. It represents Mao’s critique of the old Confucian virtue of courage, which he criticized as being merely the courage to oppress the people and uphold the feudal system, rather than the courage to truly serve them. The upbeat, youthful music initially seems to support Mao’s slogan, like a marching tune. However, the rapidly flashing title cards feel more like brainwashing, leaving no time for reflection. Meanwhile, a child’s faint questions about the slogan are met with a woman’s assertive, dismissive responses, which effectively silences the child’s voice and any dissent.

Collective Memories: It Follows It Passes On (2023) and Natural Disaster (2023)

“It Follows It Passes On” reveals a familial anecdote with a Proustian touch. Constructed as a metaphorical bridge of memories connecting two landscapes and political entities, Kinmen — an island off the coast of Taiwan — has long served as a strategic military outpost, bearing the scars of historical conflicts between Taiwan and China. For the past two generations, the fragments of artillery shells in Kinmen, along with the recollections tied to them, have been an eternal death threat from across the strait. However, for director Erica Sheu and her generation, those shells are “teeth on the beach” — forgotten remnants, discarded and left behind. Sheu’s earliest memory is of a toy bowl falling onto the beach — echoing the dropped shells, the ordinary and the wartime. The burden of guilt inevitably lingers as one reflects on the hardships endured by earlier generations.  

“Natural Disaster” is a found footage film that retells the turmoil within Asian families. Director Tiffany Jiang overlaps and juxtaposes footage to explore the complexities of family dynamics, with natural disasters serving as symbols of these intricate relationships. The connections between the images are subtle, relying heavily on Jiang’s text to weave them together. While the “family” is depicted visually, their identities remain intentionally ambiguous, allowing the film to resonate with a broader audience beyond its specific Asian cultural context. By blending definitions of these disasters with personal recollections of growing up in an unstable environment, the film captures the haunting, often unspoken tensions that shape familial experiences.

The “Celluloid Synergy: Experimental Films from 1960s-Now” shorts block screened at the 47th Asian American International Film Festival.

Interview sections were edited for clarity and concision.

When a 17-year-old boy mistook director Zoë Eisenberg for a fellow high schooler and asked her out to a party, she replied incredulously, “I’m 30. I’m also married.” They shared a laugh before parting ways, but the encounter also prompted a question for Eisenberg: what kind of woman would have lied? Where would she have to be in her life to have said yes?

“Chaperone”’s Misha (Mitzi Akaha) feels like she’s going nowhere. On the eve of her 30s, her 12-year tenure at a failing local theater looks to most as if she is settling. Misha declines a promotion due to the responsibility it would require and swears contentment living alone with her cat in a house she inherited from her grandmother. It’s the judgmental people around her that bring her stress, and in the small coastal town of Hilo, Hawai’i Island, they are everywhere. When high schooler Jake (Laird Akeo) mistakes her for a peer, Misha finds an opportunity for solace through her lie.

Eisenberg made clear that her debut feature was not a moral tale. “I’m always interested in human choice. I tend not to place a lot of morality on my characters, because we’re all just trying to get our needs met.” But that’s not to say that the viewer shouldn’t feel conflicted, Eisenberg said. “I wanted everyone to feel a little bit sick to their stomach. Because as we’re watching them, there’s a lot in the relationship that is beautiful. And so we find ourselves wanting to root for them, even though we don’t want to root for them, because she’s lying. And it’s fucked up.”

This feeling advances as Jake’s senior year progresses and Misha entangles herself further in her lies. She meets Jake’s surprisingly receptive mother Georgia (Krista Alvarez) whose woman-to-woman conversations about her son almost feel conspiratorial. Misha becomes friends with Jake’s peers and throws them a house party, while her own family and friends find the situation to be an extension of her aimless immaturity. But all parties must end, and while the narrative waives judgment, Misha’s actions still incite consequences for which she pays dearly. By the time she reveals her age to Jake, her life has fallen apart.

On the film poster and throughout their marketing material, “Chaperone”’s tagline is “This is not a love story.” “It’s a tragedy,” said Eisenberg, and not just for Jake, whose first love was built on a dishonest power imbalance. It’s tragic for Misha, too, as she approaches Jake’s high school in the final scene, potentially doomed to repeat her cycle of dishonesty. The open ending cinches “Chaperone”’s amorphous morality, but it also suggests a more realistic truth: that growth might take time beyond the confines of a film.

For Eisenberg, the tragedy is also in society’s judgment of Misha, which she found mirrored by the real world: “[In development], many people thought that ‘Chaperone’ was a slacker film. And I was like, I don’t view Misha as a slacker. People in her life view her as a slacker — she kept the same job for years and she is in a privileged place where she doesn’t have to worry about the cost of living. Most of us don’t have that luxury; but if we did, how would we live our lives? I was interested in this status quo character living on an island — I know so many people in Hawai’i who have done the same job for 20 years and love it. And it can be simple work. We need simple work. And yet, I don’t know how to talk about it without being pejorative; we’re such an ambitious and focused culture.” 

Standing up for such sentiments is not the only struggle with independent film – especially one made in Hawai’i, where the film infrastructure is not as developed as other tentpole industry locales. For Eisenberg, scrappy Hawaiian filmmaking was second nature: “I’ve never made a film, not in Hawai’i, and I’ve always just been a work-with-what-you-have-type.” Filming locations were homes and haunts of local friends and community in Hilo, while the script would change to fit the actors’ cast; the entire “Chaperone” team was all from or had ties to Hawai’i. It’s refreshing when Hawai’i plays itself, beyond a diegetic sense of representation. That is where independent filmmaking thrives, in an enmeshing between narrative and its immediate contexts.

“Chaperone” is but a part of a recent rise of indie Hawaiian film upon which Eisenberg proudly reflects: “It’s been speeding up again in the last 10 years. Filmmakers from Hawai’i used to feel like ‘Okay, I have to go to film school.’ And then I have to move to one of the big film hubs to be able to be a filmmaker. They didn’t feel like they could be a filmmaker in Hawai’i.” But a lot of that changed during the COVID pandemic. As the whole world restructured itself, the islands’ community found an opportunity to look around and build anew. “We saw a lot of those filmmakers move home and realize that ‘Okay, not only can I make this work, but I should make this work.’ We want our stories to be told by people that are from here. And unless we stay here to do it, it’s not going to happen.”

“Chaperone” screened at the 47th Asian American International Film Festival.

Through what was initially a project about the formation of Asian American basketball leagues, director Erica Tanamachi and producer Jenn Lee Smith found a contemporary story that they could intertwine within the historical context of Asian basketball. This rabbit hole led to them finding Ashley Chea, a second-generation Cambodian American basketball prodigy. Their documentary, “Home Court,” follows Chea as she navigates high school life as one of the country’s top prospects. Suffering a devastating PCL tear which caused her to miss the entirety of the season, Ashley’s persistence and determination to get back on the court inspires the audience as they begin to see the growth in her skill level, leadership, and maturity. However, the film is about more than just basketball – it shows layers of diasporic and familial histories that parallel Ashley’s journey through school and the decisions she has to make for herself. 

The real beginning of Ashley’s story starts with her grandmother. In her interview, she describes a time during the Khmer Rouge’s reign over Cambodia in the 1970s where she had to escape soldiers on her bike while they were shooting at her. Ultimately, she fled their home country to the United States as a refugee. While the history of Cambodia may be less known, producer Brandon Soun, who is also a second-generation Cambodian American, believes that this story has the potential to reach a wider array of audiences, to communities outside the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) space. He stated that though the Khmer Rouge is unfortunately an essential part of our history, “it needs to be contextualized, and that way we can move our stories past that and reflect how it is now in a more prosperous and resilient story context,” such as the case with Ashley. The sacrifices in her family’s history will always be tied to her, and it is in her hands to realize it and continue her path forward.

Following the family for several years, Brandon Soun found shades of his younger self in Ashley’s story and the complex family dynamics of immigrant refugee parents and their children. He stated, “where I am right now, I can say that I was in the same position as Ashley in not really understanding my culture, not engaging with my parents, and feeling ashamed of my background.” Through these examinations, he felt it was important to show what children of refugees go through and how they navigate their world without the help of their parents, but also show the sacrifices their parents have made to get their children to where they are now, and ultimately where they want to be. Soun reflected that “it takes time to really heal, get closer to your parents, learn more about your culture and identity, and to seek out more spaces where you can find community and people who look like you and share the same upbringing.”  

Growing up, Ashley played for a basketball club in a local league for Asian and Asian American kids where she experienced racism early on in interleague games but overcame the adversity and stereotypes after she and her teammates proved their skills on the court. Gaining prominence after World War II, Asian American basketball leagues served as safe spaces for Asian Americans to play ball and build their communities. Like many that came before her, Ashley also found love for the game and safety in it. There is such a deep history in Asian American basketball leagues that even Ashley’s coach, Jayme Kiyomura Chan, has direct ties to them, as her father played in these leagues and went on to be the founder of Yonsei Basketball in the 1990s. 

By the time Ashley reaches her senior year, the stakes are at their highest. With a newfound mindset as team captain, Ashley leads the Flintridge Wolves as they roll through the competition to win the league title, advancing to the state tournament where their cinderella story comes to its bittersweet end. All she can do afterward is reflect and appreciate her last season and high school career before moving on to college.

Acknowledging the context of our histories allows us to find our place in the bigger picture of which we are a part. Ashley Chea’s story is strengthened by those who came before her, as many prominent Asian and Asian American figures have paved the way for girls like her to be accepted and celebrated in these spaces instead of just being tolerated. Brandon Soun hopes that “folks can find a piece of themselves in the film in whatever way they can” and perhaps be inspired by Ashley or the many other people portrayed in the film, because “we’re in a place where our community can succeed and thrive, and create the spaces to have our stories told and our voices heard.”

The timing of this film could not have been more perfect with the exponential rise in popularity of women’s sports, especially with the WNBA. Through the joys and pains of basketball, Ashley Chea wants people to know that “if I don’t play well, it’s not because I’m Asian, it was just because I was having a bad day.”

“Home Court” screened at the 47th Asian American International Film Festival.