Given the events of this calendar year, we almost forgot we turned 45 this past month!
As you can imagine, we’ve weathered many other storms throughout the decades—with the ever-changing media landscape and issues facing our local and larger communities, we’ve learned to listen and evolve. From the piloting of the first ever film festival for Asian Americans in 1978 to the first nationally-accessible online AAIFF in 2020, the Asian American movement print quarterly Bridge Magazine to the online media arts journal CineVue, the development of Chinese Cable Television (CCTV) to the basic cable channel AZN TV, we met the challenges where they were and embraced new media forms.
AAIFF at the Rosemary Theater in Chinatown, 1988
As an organization, we exist and continue to exist only because of you, our community. The record attendance this past festival (7000+ attendees!) and amplified call to actions as of late proves that the mission our founders set out to achieve is still relevant today: there is a need in the APIA community for representative, challenging, innovative storytelling, as well as access to the tools to produce and distribute such content. The space we create through our programs and events is important.
The Impact
In 2020, we were able to achieve some significant firsts.
We celebrated together at ACV’s Oscars Viewing Party as PARASITE made history as the first foreign language film to win Best Picture.
YELLOW ROSE, the fiscal sponsorship project we took on 8 years ago, became the first Filipino-led film acquired by a major Hollywood studio.
API film fests across the nation organized together for the first time at this unified of a scale to host a voter participation screening and panel of FIRST VOTE. We also co-presented a MULAN event to raise funds for East Coast Chinatowns, queer cinema series Prismatic Taiwan, and screening of A THOUSAND CUTS with special guests Jose Antonio Vargas, Ramona Diaz, and Maria Ressa.
We launched our Social Distanced Watch Parties series, with Q&As for TIGERTAIL and NEVER HAVE I EVER
The boundaries of remote viewing were tested as we brought our National Tour and the 43rd Asian American International Film Festival completely online for the first time ever.
And there are so many milestones we still have yet to achieve. We’re aiming to raise $10,000 by the end of December in order to continue bringing impactful programming to you in 2021.
Let's Make it a Full Century!
If you’d like to continue breaking ground with us over our next 45 years, here are some ways to support:
Set-up a recurring donation. Monthly donations provide critical and reliable support for our programs.
Give a gift on behalf of another via the “In Honor Of” option. Great for all special occasions!
Check to see if your employer will double your donation through a matching gift program.
If you’re unable to make a financial donation, support by setting up a personal fundraiser on Facebook or share our campaign landing page to help us meet our goal!
Every bit helps, so thank you for your contribution! All donations are 100% tax-deductible.
**Note that donors will receive priority RSVP access to our first event of 2021—a free online community screening of MINARI (dir. Lee Isaac Chung). While supplies last.**