The annual week-long Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, presented by HBO, included a marathon of feature films, film shorts and live music.
The festival promotes film on Asian American life or with Asian American actors and directors. Ten of the 13 films featured by the festival — which varied in genre from thriller to romantic comedy to documentary — were shown in the Ibrahim Theater at Penn’s International House.
Festival Director Joe Kim was pleased with the outcome of his fourth such festival. “We had a wide variety of films, which were received very well,” he said. “Our aims were to bring great Asian American films to Philadelphia and to expose people to different perspectives on Asian American life … which we think the films accomplished.”
Monday night’s showings — a short documentary on slum life in Delhi, India, and an examination of homosexual attitudes in India — addressed atypical perspectives in Indian culture. The first film exposed the ugly underbelly of India’s capital, a city where hundreds of thousands of construction workers toil for less than the local minimum wage, in dangerous work environments and squalid housing.
The second documentary, I Am by Asian American filmmaker Sonali Gulati, explored her journey as a lesbian back to India to confront the taboo against homosexuality, outlawed until as recently as 2009.
Kim was also pleased with Penn’s reception of the festival. “Penn was very welcoming and the partnership worked very well. I was very happy a lot of Penn students were involved as volunteers.”
Events Coordinator Herb White added that “there are actually not a lot of venues in Philadelphia to screen films to a large audience at a reasonable price, so International House was particularly useful.”
Volunteer and 2010 College graduate Julie Hsieh was enthusiastic about the festival’s success. “There was a good turnout overall, and the wide range of people who attended the events was really eye-opening,” she said. Associate Director of Penn’s Pan-Asian American Community House Sheilla Cervantes, who also helped organize the events, added that while the festival might seem a little left-of-center, “I’d definitely encourage people to come out to experience different perspectives in American society.”
Tonight’s film, Enforcing the Silence — the final showing of the festival which will be held in the Prince Music Theater — is a documentary on the first Vietnamese American reportedly assassinated on United States soil in 1981.
This story has been updated to clarify that the festival takes place over a week.
