Shows & Events
The Boston Asian American Film Festival

Past Event

Oct 21—31, 2022

The Boston Asian American Film Festival

New England's Largest Asian American Film Festival

The Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) empowers Asian Americans through film by showcasing Asian American experiences and serving as a resource to filmmakers and the Greater Boston Community. BAAFF is a co-production of Asian American Resource Workshop and ArtsEmerson.

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Info

Venue

Emerson Paramount Center
559 Washington Street
Boston, MA 02111

Dates

Oct 21, 2022 - Oct 31, 2022

Special Offers

All-Access Festival Pass: $150
(All 2022 Film Programs)
Get Package

Shorts Pass: $40
Watch all 5 Film Shorts Programs
Get Package

Details

Watch Feature Films In Person at the Emerson Paramount Center

$12-15 per film

For additional filmmaker information, visit baaff.org

Shorts Program

The Boston Asian American Film Festival: Shorts Program

Available On Demand OCT 21–30

Learn More

Feature Films

Crossings

Directed by Deann Borshay Liem

$12 | 94 Minutes | Documentary
Ages 16+ (Archival footage of war scenes, death and destruction)

Fri, Oct 21 @ 5:30 pm

In CROSSINGS, a group of international women peacemakers sets out on a risky journey across the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, calling for an end to a 70-year war that has divided the Korean peninsula and its people. The groundbreaking mission of Women Cross DMZ is captured in an intimate cinema vérité style, framed with historic newsreels of the Korean War and punctuated with dramatic contemporary news coverage. Undeterred, Women Cross DMZ expands their global campaign to educate and advocate for a peace treaty. Thousands join worldwide as they forge a path with their Korean sisters toward peace and reconciliation.

Q&A with filmmaker to follow.

Tickets

Dawning (preceded by A Father's Son)

Directed by Young Min Kim

$12 | 75 minutes | Narrative (Psychological Thriller)
Ages 16+ (Self harm, death/suicide, mature language and strobing lights)
In English and Korean with subtitles

Fri, Oct 21 @ 8:30 pm

A trauma therapist, Haejin Park, is forced to face her family’s darkest past after she returns to her childhood countryside-farm to console her heartbroken younger sister.

During Haejin’s visit, the family farm’s familiarity and haunting past begins to conjure up the trauma that she had repressed for years.

A thriller that explores mental health, family trauma, abuse and familial responsibilities.

Q&A with filmmaker to follow.

A Father’s Son

Directed by Patrick Chen
28 min | Narrative (Crime Thriller) | In English and Chinese with subtitles

A story-spinoff based on author Henry Chang’s crime novel series of NYPD Detective Jack Yu. Set in the early ’90s when local street gangs terrorized Manhattan’s Chinatown, our story centers on Jack Yu investigating the murder of a teenage boy involved in a turf war. Amidst the broad distrust and racial divide between the Chinatown community and NYPD, our lone lawman searches for a nondescript immigrant family to deliver a shattering message that also brings forth his own conflicted relationship with Jack’s father.

Tickets

BOSTON CHINATOWN ARTIVISM

Sat, Oct 22 @ 2:00 pm

CENTERPIECE

$15
Q&A with filmmakers to follow films

Convergent Waves: Boston

Directed by Lenora Lee
52 Minutes | Experimental Art Short

Convergent Waves: Boston by Lenora Lee Dance, in collaboration with Pao Arts Center, celebrates the contributions of activists and non-profit leaders, reclaiming space by eliciting stories of community agency, resilience, and transformation. Inspired by rich narrative, this work represents a powerful call for community oriented development in the face of rapid change, making a collective statement for the preservation of community as neighborhoods across the country inhabited for generations face cultural erosion, loss of businesses, and displacement through gentrification. Convergent Waves: Boston highlights successes in preserving the cultural fabric and accomplishments of these communities.

Dear Corky

Directed by Curtis Chin, Produced by Kenneth Eng
15 minutes | Documentary Short
Documentary short on famed street photographer, Corky Lee, who recently passed away from COVID. Over the course of fifty years, he covered the most important events in Asian American history, including issues of hate crimes.

Arts, Community & Boston Chinatown

Directed by Xinyan Fu
17 minutes | Documentary Short
A documentary about community artists who use their platforms and projects to uplift Chinatown community voices and Asian American experiences in the Greater Boston area.

Wise Words from an Old Friend

Directed by Kenneth Eng
4 minutes | Documentary Short
Our old friend Tunney Lee offers words of advice for the next generation.

Tickets

In Search of Bengali Harlem

Directed by Vivek Bald, Alaudin Ullah

$12 | 85 Minutes | Ages 16+ (Brief references to childhood trauma/abuse, child marriage)
In English & Bengali with English subtitles

Sat, Oct 22 @ 5:30 pm

As a teenager in 1980s Harlem, Alaudin Ullah was swept up in the revolutionary energy of early hip-hop. He rejected his working-class Bangladeshi parents and turned his back on everything South Asian and Muslim. Now, as an actor and playwright in post-9/11 America, Alaudin wants to tell his parents’ stories, but has no idea of the lives they led as Muslim immigrants of an earlier era. In Search of Bengali Harlem follows Ullah from the streets of New York City to the villages of Bangladesh to uncover the pasts of his father, Habib, and mother, Mohima. Alaudin discovers that Habib was part of a rich lost history of mid-20th century Harlem, in which Bengali Muslim men, dodging racist Asian Exclusion laws, married into New York’s African American and Puerto Rican communities.

Q&A with filmmaker to follow.

Tickets

Queer & Here Shorts Program

$12 | 80 Minutes

Sat, Oct 22 @ 8:30 pm

A staple of every BAAFF season, the Queer and Here shorts program showcases self-expression and the complexities of identity beyond orientation.

Tickets

Hotter Up Close

Directed by Leland Montomery
14 minutes | Strong Language
On the eve of his 30th birthday, a gay slacker must overcome his crippling insecurities in order to find love.
Trailer

Skin Can Breathe

Directed by Chheangkea Ieng
11 minutes | In English and Central Khmer with subtitles
Having to constantly negotiate his identity, a queer Cambodian American teenager finds home inside the water of his high school pool.

Danse Macabre

Directed by Randal Lee Kamradt, Maria Luna Kamradt
10 minutes | 13+ (Strong graphics, violence)
Dancers Lino and Dante are struck by tragedy and the supernatural.
Trailer

Maneki

Directed by Brandon Okumura
13 minutes
After being rejected by her favorite customer, a cashier must reconcile her feelings when the customer continues to visit the ramen shop.

I Can’t Forget Him

Directed by Kevin Kai Wing Yiu
14 minutes | 13+ (Sexual references)
In English and Cantonese with English subtitles
A young rent-boy GaGa goes on a vacation at Lamma island with his drug dealer best friend during Dragon Boat Festival, but the trip turns haywire when he goes on a date with a mysterious legendary poet from 2000 years ago – Qu Yuan. GaGa falls in love and lives happily after with Qu Yuan in the ocean in the Lamma island. It is a fantasy, modern romantic comedy and folktale that marries Hong Kong superstitious tradition and local queer culture.
Trailer

All I Want Is Everything

Directed by Alexandra Cuerdo
17 minutes | 13+ (Drug Use) | In English and Korean with subtitles
ALL I WANT IS EVERYTHING is a coming-of-age crime drama about a good Asian girl gone very, very bad. Fiercely driven Alice Kim battles class, race and family pressure to become a drug dealer in NYC’s wild underground rave scene.
Trailer

Golden Delicious

Directed by Jason Karman

$12 | 120 Minutes | Narrative
Ages 16+ (Homophobic and strong language, violence, nudity, simulated sex scenes)

Sun, Oct 23 @ 2:00 pm

When basketball-obsessed Aleks moves in across the street, Asian-Canadian teen Jake finds himself trying out for the basketball team to get his attention in this classic coming-of-age drama set in the digital age.

Q&A with filmmaker to follow.

Tickets

Bad Axe

Directed by David Siev

$15 | 100 Minutes | Documentary

Sun, Oct 23 @ 5:30 pm

CLOSING NIGHT FILM

After leaving NYC for his rural hometown of Bad Axe, MI at the start of the pandemic, an Asian-American filmmaker documents his family’s struggles to keep their restaurant open. As fears of the virus grow, deep generational scars dating back to the Cambodian Killing Fields unearth between the family’s patriarch, Chun, and his daughter, Jaclyn. When the BLM movement takes center stage in America, the family uses their voice to speak out in their town where Trumpism runs deep. What unfolds is a real-time portrait of 2020 through the lens of this multicultural family’s fight to keep their American dream alive in the face of a pandemic, Neo-Nazis, and the trauma of having survived a genocide.

Q&A with filmmaker and Closing Night Reception to follow.

Tickets

Shorts Program

The Boston Asian American Film Festival: Shorts Program

Available On Demand OCT 21–30

Learn More

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Oct 21—31, 2022

The Boston Asian American Film Festival

New England's Largest Asian American Film Festival

Info

Venue

Dates

Oct 21, 2022 - Oct 31, 2022

Special Offers

Details

Watch Feature Films In Person at the Emerson Paramount Center

$12-15 per film

Shorts Program