This year’s Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) presented stories that may have unintentionally centered around a common theme of healing, or the medicinal value of movies. A fitting thread for a community “rising together” out of the pandemic. While the previous year’s selection of films seemed to emphasize activism and social and political issues impacting Asians, such as the frontlines of the pandemic and the suppression of media in the Philippines, the featured 2021 productions were slightly more intimate, with more focus on recovery. The festival ran from October 20-24, with shorts being available through October 31. BAAFF, this year, was fully virtual.
“I think it’s probably more that personal aspect of the roles or individuals and the choices that they make, whatever commitments they may have,” said festival director Susan Chinsen. She added, “The closing night film [“Who is Lun*na Menoh?”] is [about] decisions that you make and how you tell your story, how you identify, all those things that are very much part of our community, whether you identify as Chinese American, Taiwanese American, [or] South Asian American. People are very specific about those things, but from our perspective, the Asian American experience is not one thing. … That’s sort of the core of the festival, continuing to offer that to people during this pandemic.”
The Centerpiece Narrative of the festival was the film “Waikiki,” directed by Christopher Kahunahana. The story follows the trajectory of a native Hawaiian hula dancer, Kea, who is trying to escape from her abusive boyfriend and ends up crashing her van into a mysterious homeless man named Wo. Kea ends up embarking on a psychological, existential journey as she tries to seek comfort and safety, and the film draws a stark contrast between the beautiful, idyllic world that tourists associate Hawaii with and the darker, grittier reality of the people living there, who still suffer from the impact of generational trauma of postcolonial cultures. Kahunahana, who used to own a nightclub in Honolulu’s Chinatown, said that he drew much of the story’s elements and characters from real, lived experiences. Kea essentially finds herself in very much the same place where she started by the end of the film, suggesting that while many tourists see Hawaii as a land of escape, there is no real escape for the people who live there who are struggling. Kahunahana said that he wanted to capture “the person behind the smile.”
“It felt important to draw a comparison between the original, hotel destination and the existing monstrosity that is Waikiki,” said Kahunahana. “It’s so far removed from anything Hawaiian that it felt like the perfect way for me to explore some of the issues we have, as Hawaiians, surrounding land usage, sustainability, and the depiction of our heritage, culture, and language, as a means to only market visitors’ needs. Waikiki is kind of the first tourist experiment. Billions and billions of dollars are spent to market Hawaaii as a tourist, paradise destination. With that marketing also comes the erasure of our true culture.”
BAAFF also held a Filipino Friday event, where three Filipino films were screened. One of these was “Lumpia with a Vengeance,” a comedic action film about a crime fighting avenger who is armed with lumpia, a kind of Filipino egg roll. He teams up with a high school student named Rachel to save Fogtown from a crime syndicate that is selling drugs masked as food. Filipino Friday also featured the films “Wherever We May Be,” a documentary, and “The Girl Who Left Home,” a movie musical. The Centerpiece Documentary, “Sky Blossom: Diaries of the Next Greatest Generation,” follows the stories of youth who are responsible for being caretakers to their sick or disabled family members. The movie is sensitively directed by Richard Lui, who was inspired by his own experience taking care of his father, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Anna Zeng, BAAFF’s programming director, said that while the movie does not have a specific focus on Asian Americans on the surface, it is still an Asian American story.
“To build on this idea a bit, I think the lived experiences of AAPI filmmakers/writers within their identity continue to inform their work, even when the subject matter of the film doesn’t explicitly follow the outlines of a traditionally AAPI story,” said Zeng. “For that reason, I hope to see the filmgoers that attend BAAFF broaden their definition of what AAPI filmmaking constitutes, in the hopes that we can celebrate the work and the gains that filmmakers in our community make when they produce work outside of what we traditionally label as AAPI stories. While the films we get about racism (both personal and systemic), immigration, intergenerational gaps or trauma, language barriers, etc. are invaluable in showcasing different aspects of AAPI experiences and history, I also want to support our AAPI filmmakers that find inspiration outside of those specific subjects so that we can broaden the definition of both AAPI storytelling and what we label as valid AAPI experiences.”
