Asian-Americans start thinking - and shooting - outside the box

New York

It's been a good year for Asian-American filmmakers - but there's still some way to go before they become a major force in the industry. That's the message from Risa Morimoto, the executive director of Asian Cine Vision, the organisation behind New York's annual Asian American International Film Festival. 'We've made some deep inroads into the industry this year,' Morimoto says from New York City. 'There are more movies with Asian-American content than there used to be, and there are more of us making films. But we still need a greater presence in the mainstream. Audiences still see too few Asian-Americans on the screen.'

That's where the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) - this year was the 29th - enters the picture. The festival not only shows the best Asian-American movies of the year, it supports new film-makers by hosting seminars on film-making and the business of film. This year's opening movie was Vietnamese-American Ham Tran's Journey from the Fall, about Vietnamese boat people.

Plans are afoot to bring the highlights of the festival to Hong Kong later this year.

The AAIFF's mandate is to act as a voice for Asian-American filmmakers, says festival director Diana Lee. Although Asians account for a significant part of the American population, they have long been under-represented in the media. The AAIFF offers Asians a channel to get their work out - and to demonstrate that they don't only make movies about their cultural identity. 'Part of our purpose is to introduce audiences to the diverse nature of Asian-American films,' says Lee. 'We want to show people that we make many different kinds of films - they're not just about identity issues. We still explore these, but there's much more to our film scene than that.'

One of those different films last year was Alice Wu's Saving Face, a romantic drama considered to be a step forward for Asian-American filmmakers. Wu's daring film broke stereotypes with its gentle lesbian story. It was also marketed as a mainstream romance rather than a niche picture aimed at Asian-American viewers - a move that suggests that Asian films can appeal to a wider audience.