ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS FROM THE 25TH ASIAN AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL (AAIFF) EDITION OF CINEVUE

JUSTIN LIN
"Passion, A Good Team and Leverage" — 2002 AAIFF

ERIC LIN
"Alter Egos" — 2002 AAIFF

MARLINA GONZALES
"Finding 32 East Broadawy, Asian CineVision's First Home" — 2002 AAIFF

ROGER GARCIA
"Shopping for Space on the Shelf" — 2002 AAIFF

 
 
 
SHOPPING FOR SPACE ON THE SHELF
Interview conducted with Roger Garcia at the 24 th AAIFF 2001

AAIFF: Talk about Asian American film…What is the importance/value of that?

Roger: Well I think the Asian American International Film Festival is very important to help promote younger filmmakers and to encourage young people to make works. If they had nowhere to show their stuff then there wouldn’t be much compulsion to make it. People would make it, but unfortunately other people wouldn’t see it. I think it’s good to have a festival dedicated specifically to Asian American work. After all, there are African American, Jewish and other ethnic film festivals, so why there shouldn’t be an Asian American film festival? It’s useful because you’re able to show in an Asian American film festival some feature films from Asia, which probably wouldn’t normally make it into the normal mainstream festivals in the United States, particularly now that there are more independent filmmakers in Asia making things on say digital video or making more alternative works. They need an outlet as well, and a festival like an Asian American festival is a pretty good venue for that.

AAIFF: As a producer who works in different areas of the film industry, what would you like to see happen in Asian American cinema in the future? I’d like to see a better distribution system for Asian American films. Distribution at best is always like a supermarket; you struggle for space on the shelf and of course the space on the shelf is usually taken over by large star-driven Hollywood movies or independent films that win prizes at Sundance, which are across the board type of movies from the United States and other countries as well.

Roger: What I’d like to see is a festival that is able to highlight really good work that would attract the attention of distributors in the same way that Sundance does. It’s a little idealistic, but should showcase some work that distributors would be interested in, particularly features from Asia and also features and short works made here. A lot of the market for short works diminished with the dot com collapse, but there is no reason to think that there isn’t still a future for short films—which there is, on DVD and things like that. I think it would be great if the Asian American film festival could actually attract and act as a magnet for distribution.

In terms of how I’d like to see Asian American film developing, I’d like to see essentially more of it, and of course now with digital video, everybody can go out and shoot something. Of course not all of it would be good. But it’s useful that people could go out and make their own films, which has always been the main thing really. The more you make the more attention you get, particularly when you have festivals showcasing the work.

The other thing I’d like to see, is not so much on the filmmaking side, but on the critical side. There aren’t very many film critics who devote themselves to Asian American film—very few in fact, and it tends to be more in the area of academia where Asian American films are classed as part of Asian American studies or multiethnic studies.

There aren’t people out there who are writing specifically about Asian American films in mainstream publications. I see very few interviews with Asian American screenwriters. I only see occasional interviews with Asian American filmmakers in the independent film magazines. I see very few interviews with Asian American filmmakers on major filmmaker type websites like indie.com, etcetera. Those that are devoted to cinema don’t devote a whole lot of space to Asian American films, and I know that there are a lot of Asian American films and filmmakers out there, and I think that’s a shame.