I went to a panel with the above title at the VC Film Fest today hosted by my man Tad Nakamura and old school Asian American doc maker, Spencer Nakasako.

It was a colorful, informal chat, but in the end two issues seemed to bubble up to the surface:
1) the fact that it's difficult to get Asian Americans to support Asian American films,
2) the fact that, while there are more Asian American films than ever before, many of them are bad.

Cross out the word "Asian American" (or even just "Asian") and both of these read as truisms about film and media today in general. Nothing new. I think the added problem for Asian American film, however, is that the phrase technically covers a lot of disparate groups that don't necessarily feel the need to support each other. It's a blanket label that in these times might be stretched too thin.

While skimming through Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott's "Memos to Hollywood" on nytimes.com, I noticed this bit:

To: Heads of production, Sony, Universal, Paramount, Fox, Disney

Cc: Joe Swanberg, Andrew Bujalski, Greta Gerwig, Aaron Katz and all their Facebook Friends

From: A.O.S.

You all keep trying to make Rock Hudson-Doris Day-style romantic comedies with the golden guys and gals of the moment, and the results are sexless, subtextless, bland career-girl-in-search-of-Mr.-Right retreads. Meanwhile, a bunch of hungry directors with digital cameras, time on their hands and not much money are making free-form studies about tentative hookups and long conversations among actual, overeducated, undermotivated young folks.

I'm digging Mr. Scott's vibe on this, but the phrasing "among actual, overeducated, undermotivated young folks" succinctly describes, from what I have gathered in conversation and in reading, the traits that largely turn many people off of some of the listed directors' films.

On the other hand, those same traits clearly appeal to those filmmakers' core audiences, so they must be doing something right.