When you think about film in 2024, a few obvious standouts come to mind. Shogun and… wait, what else was there? When the FTI staff put our heads together to create this list, we admittedly got a bit stuck naming projects that stayed with us throughout the year. There always seems to be a general […]
Back in May this year, we attended the recently rebranded VC Film Fest (fka Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival). From May 1st to May 10th, the festival took place predominantly in Little Tokyo, but spanned new venues in Long Beach as well as online. Despite the 40-year old festival being a regular on our […]
One of the greatest things about being able to cover SXSW over multiple years is seeing which artists come back with material. I met one such artist, Chi Thai, at an Asian networking event in 2022 who had helped develop an AR project, Prototype: Acorn. And while we didn’t meet in person in 2023, the […]
If you had told me I would have been eating dinuguan in a backyard full of Filipino-Texan artists, aunties, and families during SXSW this year, I would have prayed you were right. It was a dream-made-reality by a generous invitation from Kayla Galang, a filmmaker with not only rich ties to the Filipino American community […]
Asian and Asian American cinema in 2022 was decidedly uncategorical. As monoliths crumble and new ways of being Asian in the diaspora are revealed on screen, audiences this year were treated to intimate personal stories as well as the thrill of breaking barriers we barely had words for. There will always be a cultural gulf […]