Hollywood has never been an easy place to be Asian. For most of the 20th century, the only Asians on the silver screen were subservient geishas, smouldering dragon ladies, stuttering waiters or evil Fu Manchus. Sometimes they weren't even played by Asians, but by Caucasians with their faces painted yellow. They were two-dimensional stereotypes at best, and always branded as mysterious and alien. But in 1979, Hong Kong-born filmmaker Wayne Wang began a low-budget movie set in San Francisco's Chinatown. Shot on modest 16mm black-and-white film, it starred both professionals and locals and represented Chinese as real people. Its release in 1982 as Chan is Missing was a rallying cry for a new movement: Asian-American Cinema. This month, the first Asian-American Film Festival premieres in Hong Kong, and demonstrates just how far this revolution has come. Sponsored by the Hong Kong America Centre and New York's Asian Cinevision, an extensive programme of four features, 19 short films and several academic talks will take place at eight universities in Hong Kong and Macau during the coming months, covering a dizzying array of genres, cultures and concerns. From the polished indie hit Saving Face (starring Joan Chen) to a quirky, digital-video musical (Colma: The Musical) and all the shorts in-between, the festival aims to explore the complexities of the term 'Asian-American'. Festival co-ordinator Cindy Wong Hing-yuk, a professor in media culture at the City University of New York and currently a Fulbright fellow at City University of Hong Kong, says it's meaningful for Hong Kong students to understand more about Asian-American identity. 'I think this isn't a familiar concept in places like Hong Kong, with a homogenous population, where if you don't look Chinese, you're not 'Hong Kong',' she says. 'In the United States, it's a different story. Granted, there's still racism, but ... these people are indeed Americans.' Proving this point was one of the goals of much early Asian-American cinema, says John Woo of Asian Cinevision (ACV), the first arts organisation dedicated to exhibiting, promoting and preserving the work of media creators of Asian descent. Founded in 1976 in New York's Chinatown, ACV created the first annual Asian-American film festival in the US. Now there are 16, most of which began by renting ACV's tour programmes. Woo and his team selected the Hong Kong festival's programme, consciously trying to emphasise the independent, DIY roots of Asian-American film. 'What we wanted to show the Hong Kong community is that you can be out there and make films yourself,' says Woo, pointing to the recent unlikely success of Colma: The Musical. The story of a Filipino-American teenager in San Francisco, it covers 'issues of Asian-American identity, gay identity, ambition and family values', says Woo. The award-winning digital- video feature, which cost only US$15,000 to make and now has US distribution, may prove an inspiration to local film students. The inaugural festival seeks to show that the US is intrinsically diverse. Asian-American is a 'constantly contested term. There's not one Asian-American experience,' says Wong. Two of the shorts deal with the phenomenon of call centres in India (Nalini by Day, Nancy by Night and Call Centre), touching with wry humour on the multiple identities wrought by globalisation - and perhaps surprising those who didn't consider South Asians to be Asian-American. 'What we look for is the best storytelling so we're being inclusive,' says Woo. The organisers hope the festival will lay the foundations for similar events where the bond between Hong Kong and Asian-American cinema can be further explored. At the very least, it will show a small but powerful alternative to the Hollywood system - and the strength of a unique hybrid culture. The Asian-American Film Festival tours local universities until October. For programme details, go to www.cuhk.edu.hk/hkac/filmfestival07
