GBH WORLD has created a lineup of films in honor of AAPI slated for the entire month of May. There will be a total of four programs on WORLD; three will be full-length documentaries, and seven short films titled, Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond. The intersection of recognizing emerging filmmakers from different backgrounds while highlighting diversity and culture is something that GBH WORLD takes pride in. GBH’s General Manager for Television, Liz Cheng discussed the return to the studio after Covid and the excitement around the programs in honor of AAPI month. “Now that we are back it’s even more collaboration and even more content. What we try to do especially around heritage month in May, as we have been doing for over a decade now, is to really put an exclamation point on work we have done around the year while also premiering new work. And it’s been prodigious.”
The seven short films included in Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond are as follows: On All Fronts by Joua Lee Grande, follows the Moss family, a “biracial Black-Indonesian family living in Minneapolis” during 2020 amidst the rise in anti-Asian hate and the racial tension of the murder of George Floyd; In Living Memory by Quyén Nguyen-Le, chronicling the tale of a queer filmmaker living with their mother, after the pandemic closed her nail salon. They worked together to “articulate the legacy of the salon for their refugee family”; Crossroads by Sarita Khurana, the story of the Sikh community responding to a tragic mass shooting in April of 2021, by former FedEx worker Brandon Scott Hole in Indianapolis. The story deepens as the members of the Sikh Coalition dig into the specifics of the gun laws, while trying to recover and heal from the loss of members of the community; Malditas by Bree Nieves follows two Filipinx cousins meeting in a rural Florida cemetery, coping with the loss of one of their fathers due to Covid and struggling with the remains of their hometown dreams; The Lookout by J.P. Dobrin follows Chanthon Bun, a young refugee from a single-parent home who joined a gang, leading to his conviction that cost him legal protection to remain in the U.S. After his release into ICE 20 years later and the outbreak of Covid, he was able to finally be free; Recording for Dodie by Frances Rubio is another story set in Covid times as a Filipino-American daughter records her experience of being physically distanced from her sick father during his isolation in a nursing facility; and My Chinatown, With Aloha by Kimberlee Bassford. The filmmaker, a fourth-generation Chinese American, explores her family’s relationship to Honolulu’s Chinatown and parallels between Covid and the bubonic plague in Hawaii from 1899-1900. “In Honolulu’s Chinatown… when the bubonic plague broke out… they were blamed and Chinatown burned to the ground,” Liz Cheng said. “These were a cross-section of Asian people and families whose lives were overshadowed during the pandemic… It felt right and felt important to be able to share these stories with the rest of the country.”
GBH WORLD is active on 194 stations, covering 77% of U.S. households. “When you think about it, all of us in America were touched greatly and deeply by Covid 19,” Liz said, “but imagine also being blamed for it…There is just so much diversity within the Asian American Pacific Islander plus group, that it is very hard to find issues and areas where we can find common ground.” That intersection, Liz feels, is crucial. A common ground creates room to exist as minorities, as people, for solidarity to work together and make change.
“The fact that the way we look can get us attacked,” Liz continued, “ brought us together almost like no other issue.” These films were not mere submissions, Liz explained. The commission of these films by GBH WORLD was part of an extensive mission to bring these experiences from these new filmmakers to people across the country and around the world.
The full-length films included Ganden: A Joyful Land on Doc World first shown on May 14th. By Ngawang Choephel, this film examines the lives of the remaining generation of monks in the Tibetan monastery where the Dalai Lama’s lineage began. Blurring the Color Line on America ReFramed by Crystal Kwok premiered on May 25th at 8pm ET. The film takes place in the Black community of Augusta Georgia in the Jim Crow era and centers on women’s experiences within the intersection of racism, white power, and Chinese patriarchy in the South.
The Accused, by Mohammed Ali Naqvi (Mo), examines the blasphemy laws in Pakistan and the political movements of Cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi in a dangerous atmosphere. Originally commissioned by the BBC to examine these laws, Mo said, “The blasphemy laws, just to talk about it, is a dangerous thing. Because there have been people who have criticized the blasphemy laws and ended up dead.” These laws, the death penalty part not introduced until the 1980’s according to Mo, prescribes “a mandatory death sentence for disrespecting the Prophet Muhammed and life imprisonment for desecrating the Holy Quran.” (theaccusedfilm.com). Mo commented that he found the film to be too dangerous to film at first. “I declined it…I had seen people being murdered who had even criticized this law.” Finding himself in Islamabad for another reason he ended up watching chaos unfold. “I was supposed to be there for a day or two, but I ended up staying an entire week. The reason was all the airports and everything in Islamabad was shut down…because cleric Rizvi had decided to, with his followers, chokehold Islamabad, shut own parliament, because parliament had just a few weeks earlier, decided to pass an amendment to some of the verbiage in the law, that was being interpreted as relaxing. So, I made it a point to expose him and show everybody who he was and that was essentially why I decided to make the film after all.” With the help of his Co-Producers Syed Musharaf Shah and Moshin Abbasm, and Associate Producers Muhammad Sohail Rana, Rabbia Arshad, and Madeeha Syed, he got to work with a neutral narrative set on truth.
“I think a lot of the films you see that have covered Pakistan or the Muslims in that part of the world has always been through the prism of world on terror,” Mo said, “and what I wanted to do was to talk about it from an honest perspective and the thing is, it doesn’t have anything to do with ideology and religion. It has to do with politics and power. And resources and that’s what I try to show with this film because that is the honest depiction of what it is. As much as I am an American, I am also a Pakistani… My work is very activist based, and I like to hold those people who are in positions of power and who are abusing power accountable. Just like I do with a lot of my previous work, and I wanted to hold cleric Rizvi accountable.” Mo also commented on the experience as many of his films are banned there. “That was unheard of before. Even though it was a private screening, semi-private, it was a packed house. More than 100+ people… For me it’s always such an emotional experience… We had a very long Q&A session after the screening… But one thing that really really stayed with me is that so many of us who live in Pakistan live in this fugue of PTSD.” Mo continued by saying, “The only way we can make ourselves as people in Pakistan or as society feel a little more comfortable about talking about it, is that initial risk of taking the plunge and just talking about it.”
Addressing issues present today is necessary; the conversation on difficult topics integral for moving forward. “If you don’t talk about it, you don’t understand it. You can’t change it.” Liz said. “Because we have a responsibility as filmmakers,” Mo reflected, “as storytellers, as documentarians to be honest about the human experience but to do so in a way that has integrity and ethics and humanity attached to it. I want to respect that.” The changes that can occur from sharing honest experiences and examining our society in aim of solidarity are numerous.
