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ABOUT APA FILM Mission Asian Pacific American (APA) Film, a nonprofit, tax-exempt corporation, explores the cross-cultural interface of East and West through art and education. Towards this end, our mission embodies the following goals:
History and Highlights 2002 Film Festival Highlights The 2002 festival was wildly successful and was the most attended APA event in the District of Columbia, offering a rich mix of educational programs and entertainment free of charge to the public.
Ten days of programming: Once again, the opening night crowd packed the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum to capacity with the screening of Romeo Candido’s Lolo’s Child, followed by a Q&A session with the filmmaker and reception in the lobby of the museum. Notable attendees included representatives from the Canadian embassy, and the Smithsonian leadership. The first weekend featured Lunch with Charles, a Hong-Kong/Canadian romantic comedy, and several short films programs followed by panel discussions: It’s a She Thing: Female Filmmakers; So Happy Together: Queer Asian Cinema; and Looking in the Mirror: What Does it Mean to be Asian and American Today. Panelists included prominent local community leaders, academics, filmmakers, journalists, and writers. Other highlights of the festival included our first-ever musical performance featuring three APA performers: The Grace Chung Jazz Band, Girl @ the Bus Stop, and The Romeo Candido Karaoke Show. Other notable screenings include the documentary Presumed Guilty, a look at the San Francisco public defenders office; the award-winning romantic drama Charlotte Sometimes. Our closing night film was Green Dragon, a Sundance Film Festival Selection. Produced by, and starring, Forrest Whitaker and Patrick Swayze, it is a touching look at Vietnamese refugees struggling to maintain hope in America. 2001 Film Festival Highlights
Over a period of 9 days, we: We were also the first APA film festival in the country to make all programs free of charge to the public. On opening night, the Filipino American family comedy, The Flip Side (an official selection of the 2002 Sundance Film Festival) was met with a capacity audience at the Hirshhorn. The screening was followed by a Q&A session with actors from the film and a reception. The first weekend of the festival featured two powerful documentaries, No Hop Sing, No Bruce Lee: What Do You Do When None of Your Heroes Look Like You? and Yellow Apparel: When the Coolie Becomes Cool. A panel discussion on Asian stereotypes and cultural commodification in the media followed, moderated by local NBC Reporter Shari Macias and featuring Howard University law professor Frank Wu and filmmaker Anmol Chaddha. Other highlights included the screening of Bean Cake (winner of the Palme d'Or for short films at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival), a Women Who Direct series of short films, and the poignant documentary The Split Horn: Life of a Hmong Shaman in America, about a Hmong American and his struggle to keep his family in Wisconsin connected to their 5,000-year-old spiritual traditions. Our special guests of this screening were the filmmakers and the Hmong family profiled in the documentary. 2000 Film Festival Highlights Our inaugural festival was a grand success and attracted over 1,000 patrons. It featured Post-Concussion as the opening night film, which was met with great acclaim in the overfilled 300-seat Meyer Auditorium at the Freer Gallery. The film dealt with a neoyuppie’s reassessment of his material success as he managed a recovery from a traffic accident. The Korean-Canadian director and star of the film was the guest of honor at the Filmmakers’ Reception. The week-long screenings also took place at a Loews Cineplex in Georgetown and featured such films as ABCD, a South Asian tale of modern life and love in America, and Bugaboo, a comedy depicting the dot-com malaise. The Festival closed with First Person Plural, a powerful documentary about a Korean American adoptee’s inner turmoil upon discovering that she was not an orphan and the journey she made to reconcile the love for the mother that raised her and her biological mother. This documentary was subsequently broadcast nationally on PBS.
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