As graduation season and Fathers’ Day weekend neared, the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience (APFE) celebrated AANHPI filmmakers, storytellers, creatives and community leaders at the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival in New York City (#APANYC). This year marked the third time in partnering with local AANHPI film partner, Asian CineVision (ACV) , to uplift and highlight new and veteran community voices at one the country’s most renowned film festivals.
Held on Saturday, June 10, 2023 at the Asian American-owned Sour Mouse Social Club on the Lower East Side, the full house first welcomed WGAE writer Madhuri Shekar (Evil Eye, The Nevers and the upcoming Sister Act 3) to discuss the ramifications of the ongoing WGA Strike and how it specifically affects our AANHPI communities and projects.
WGAE member Madhuri Shekar greets the gathered crowd. (Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Afterwards, a selection of cinematic artists of Asian American and Pacific islander descent featured throughout Tribeca 2023 joined moderator Kat Moon of TV Guide for an intriguing conversation spotlighting their works. Joining Kat were:
H.P. Mendoza – Director, THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT Annelise Hickey – Director, HAFEKASI Taylor Shung – Producer, SOMEWHERE QUIET and THE GRADUATES Jennifer Kim – Actor, SOMEWHERE QUIET Sean Devlin – Director, ASOG Jaya – Screenwriter, ASOG Adrian Tomine – Screenwriter, SHORTCOMINGS
Kat Moon of TV Guide joined with (from left) Annelise Hickey, Jaya, Sean Devlin, Adrian Tomine, H.P. Mendoza, Taylor Shung, and Jennifer Kim to talk film and Tribeca ’23. (Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Attendees were treated to complimentary drinks and delicious appetizers from local NYC Chinatown eateries. Notable guests in attendance included writer/director Andrew Ahn and producer Sanjay M. Sharma. In addition to celebrating three years at Tribeca, the day marked the birthdays of guest panelists Annelise Hickey and Jennifer Kim, who were serenaded on stage by the audience and fellow panelists.
APFE organizers David Magdael (Co-Founder, APFE), Milton Liu (Executive Director, Asian American Media Alliance & WGA West member), Michelle Sugihara (Executive Director, CAPE), Minji Chang (Board Member, Kollaboration), and Marvin Yueh (HappyEcstatic Media) welcomed attendees and thanked them for supporting AANHPI filmmakers and storytellers at Tribeca. Kayla Wong, Programs / Festival Director and Eunice Chen, Associate Director / Development, for Asian CineVision, producers of the Asian American International Film Festival, also welcomed guests to the organization’s hometown. For folks experiencing FOMO, event photographer Slaven Vlasic of Getty Images made a wonderful set of images in his official capacity as Event Photographer that can be found here. Additionally, a set of event photos by Andrew Ge can be found here.
Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience organizers, along with event panelists and organizers of event partner Asian CineVision, can finally exhale! (Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images)
Next up, catch the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience at Comic-Con, Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF), and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) with the Reel Asian Film Festival. Plus, planning is underway for the 20th anniversary of the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience at the Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals in Park City, Utah. Save the Date for Sunday, January 21, 2024 and we will see you in the snowy mountains, if not sooner!
A scene from Shelly Yo’s SMOKING TIGERS, part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s U.S. Narrative Competition. (Photo: Courtesy Tribeca Enterprises)
by Abraham Ferrer
So the saying goes, it’s not the quantity, but the quality that counts. If that saying can be applied to the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival set to begin on June 7, 2023 at various venues throughout the lower half of Manhattan, then it would certainly be fitting. A typically succinct and carefully-curated fortnight of cinema, television, and immersive media is even more slimmed-down, no doubt due to the effects of a two-year forced vacation due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While the 2020 edition was outright cancelled, festivals in 2021 and 2022 carried on as largely festival-from-home or hybrid events, given the persistent mask mandates and omicron variant surges that have plagued the film festival circuit during that time. While 2023 signals a “return to normal,” in some cases the pandemic has prompted festival organizers to take a look at their program line-ups and determine that there is nothing wrong with trimming the fat of bloated line-ups filled with “low-hanging fruit” and instead exercise some much-welcome rigor to their selection process.
Taking a look at this year’s Tribeca line-up, it’s apparent that the idea is to control a sense of “bloat” that may be typical of certain other festivals filled with a preponderance of work, and instead emulate tightly-curated events such as the annual Berlinale (a festival that cannot be accused of finding space for that “one more” work that someone on their programming team is willing to champion). From top to bottom, the programming is sleek, the curation is tidy. Yet when looked at from the standpoint of accommodating inclusivity, it’s clear that Tribeca makes a painfully slim space for works created by people of color. One place where this policy applies can be the comparatively slim line-up of works by makers of Asian American and Pacific Islander descent. The thirty-one honorees we counted among the total line-up is already shockingly slim. Yet when one considers that a whopping FIFTEEN honorees represent a piddly FOUR productions (multiple personnel in producing and/or screenwriting roles; and one short film is co-directed by two individuals), the resulting roster of twenty-four total works at Tribeca 2023 created by AAPI makers in a directing, producing, and/or screenwriting capacity seems downright insulting.
A still frame from director H.P. Mendoza’s THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT, part of the Tribeca Film Festival’s U.S. Narrative Competition. (Photo: Courtesy Tribeca Enterprises)
And yet, there is still much to celebrate from this seemingly paltry selection — save for a single motion picture (Sundance 2023 holdover SHORTCOMINGS, set for release at the beginning of August but presumably selected for its showcasing of New York City), every other AAPI Tribeca work is poised to enjoy a World or International premiere engagement. This all by itself is impressive. Also impressive is the re-emergence of voices we haven’t heard from in quite a while (we’re looking at YOU, H.P. Mendoza), as well as cinematic voices who have broken out from working in near-anonymity at cookie-cutter corporate environments to tell unique, original stories (Disney Animation acolyte Peter Sohn, whose ELEMENTAL is set for a Gala presentation). Overall, this year’s Tribeca can be thought of as a celebration of riches, with precious few spoils, if any. And that’s a good thing.
Besides the aforementioned SHORTCOMINGS, among the feature-length narratives and documentaries in this year’s Tribeca line-up are thrillers (Seán Devlin’s ASOG, Om Raut’s ADIPURUSH), intense family stories (Sara Nodjoumi’s UNTITLED NICKY NODJOUMI; Hannah Logan Peterson’s THE GRADUATES), and good ol’ fashioned indie dramas (H.P. Mendoza’s THE SECRET ART OF HUMAN FLIGHT, Shelly Yo’s debut feature SMOKING TIGERS). Award-winning producer/director Nicholas Bruckman makes his latest directorial bow with the documentary MINTED, while white-hot producer Taylor Ava Shung notches another feather in her cap with SOMEWHERE QUIET, with a little help from veteran executive producers Mynette Louie and Derek Nguyen; as well as the previously-mentioned THE GRADUATES. Add in Tian Xiaopeng’s DEEP SEA, and you have a slim but impactful complement of feature-length offerings that will be hotly anticipated as Tribeca nears its opening.
Razan Ghalayini’s charming UPSIDEDOWN is one of the short subjects premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo: Courtesy Tribeca Enterprises)
The line-up of short subjects by AAPI filmmakers, not to mention works in the indie episodic and immersive spaces is slim, a reflection of the overall reduced line-up of overall such works. However, the overall excellence of these works belie their small numbers, and one can only wish that Tribeca programmers would have seen fit to sneak in just a few more works into the mix. Works by South Asian filmmakers figure strongly in this mix and are well-represented by Razan Ghalayini (UPSIDEDOWN), Mitra Shahidi (STARLING), Vishavjit Singh (AMERICAN SIKH), and Vathana Suganya Suppiah (BLOOD). Part-Tongan filmmaker Annelise Hickey (the only filmmaker of Pacific Islander descent in the entire festival) brings the touching HAFEKASI to Tribeca screens, while the duo of Meng Xiaoxue and Tan Yuehan bring their short subject RESTLESS IS THE NIGHT to The Big Apple.
One would think that with the explosion of creative activity in the virtual and immersive realms, there would be a pronounced profile of such work at Tribeca, in much the same manner that whole sections of the Sundance and SXSW film festivals are devoted to such works. Think again, dear readers. A single episodic selection (TAKING ROOT: SOUTHEAST ASIAN STORIES OF RESETTLEMENT IN PHILADEPHIA, by a team led by Oanh-Nhi Nguyen) is the only Asian-created and themed work in the entire section, while a trio of immersive creators (Poulomi Basu – MAYA: THE BIRTH (CHAPTER ONE); Shirin Neshat – THE FURY; and Michaela Ternasky-Holland – REIMAGINED VOLUME II: MAHAL) stand out from the small crowd of virtual reality productions on display. Again, it could be a matter of content and style over sheer size. It would be up to the audience to decide for themselves whether quality trumps quantity. For the organizers of the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience, we choose to go to side of quality at this year’s edition of Tribeca. The focus on a select few works forces us to carefully consider the work at hand. If you do, we think the viewers will be pleasantly surprised.
The immersive production REIMAGINED VOLUME II: MAHAL, by a large team directed by Michaela Ternasky-Holland, is one of three such works to be showcased in the “new media” section of the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo: Courtesy Tribeca Enterprises)
For the full line-up of Tribeca ’23 films by AAPI artists, click here
Ben Tanaka (Justin Min) and his bestie Alice (Sherry Cola) make an unwelcome discovery on the streets of New York City in Randall Park’s debut feature SHORTCOMINGS, screening as a Spotlight Narrative of the 2023 Tribeca Film Festival. (Photo: Courtesy Tribeca Enterprises)
For those coming to New York City to attend the Tribeca Film Festival from June 7 through 18, 2023, the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience team wants to let you all know who we’re celebrating, centering, and spotlighting. While the pickin’s are considerably slimmer than earlier this year at Sundance ’23 and SXSW ’23, this year’s Tribeca showcases a completely new generation of Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers and cinema artists with new works that offer much excitement as this year continues into the summer months. Be sure to catch these filmmakers’ films and new media productions. As always, we think this group is very special. And we know you’ll agree with us, too!
(All honorees are Directors unless otherwise indicated)
asianpacificfilmexperience.org 