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.

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