The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival recognizes the extraordinary achievements of Asian American filmmakers through our Juried Competition and Audience Awards. The competition nominees represent the best in Asian American filmmaking from the current year.
Comcast Audience Awards
All feature-length films (with the exception of retrospective works) are eligible for the Audience Award, which is presented in two categories: Narrative Feature and Documentary Feature. The winners will be selected by YOU, the members of our audience, and will be announced at the close of the festival on March 22, 2009.
Be sure to take a ballot and make your vote count! Just tear a ballot along the edge indicating your opinion of the film — 1 for “poor” and 5 for “excellent” — and drop it in the ballot boxes as you leave the theaters.
Narrative Competition
Featuring the best in Asian American cinema, this year’s Narrative Competition boasts a talented range of filmmakers and actors, and includes two world premieres. The nominees for a diverse collection; from a kooky portrait of an overbearing sibling to a Sikh man confronting the realities of a post-9/11 world, this year’s competition films are certain to provoke, inspire and entertain.
The Best Narrative Award is presented to the best feature-length narrative film by or about Asian Americans or Asian Canadians, as selected by a three-person jury. The winner will be announced at the Closing Night Screening on March 19, 2009.
Click here for the full list of nominated films. Past Narrative Award Winners
The Narrative Jury
JUSTIN CHANG is a film critic and editor for the Hollywood trade publication Variety. In addition to writing about the latest U.S. releases, he has reviewed movies at the Cannes, Sundance, Slamdance, CineVegas, Los Angeles, and AFI film festivals and also covered awards shows including the Oscars, the Emmys and the Golden Globes. Chang is currently secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and holds a journalism degree from the University of Southern California.
MANAMI IIBOSHI is the Marketing Director of VIZ pictures, a distributor of Japanese films. She is also the Programming Director of VIZ cinema, a 200-seat theater that will open in San Francisco’s Japantown in the summer of 2009. Iiboshi received her Master of Arts in Media Studies from the University of Tokyo, and a second bachelor’s in film production from the Academy of Art University. In 2005, she became on of the founding members of VIZ pictures.
ALICE WU is a filmmaker based in New York and San Francisco. Her most recent film is the acclaimed romantic comedy Saving Face, which screened at the Toronto and Sundance film festivals and was released by Sony Pictures Classics. Wu won the prestigious CAPE screenwriting award for the film’s script in 2001. Prior to her career in filmmaking, Wu was a software engineer for many years and holds a degree in computer science from Stanford University.
Documentary Competition
Uplifting, hard-hitting and personal, this year’s Documentary Competition includes six films that explore some of the most pressing and intriguing issues in Asia/America, and includes three world premieres. These unique films prove themselves heavy contenders in the genre of documentary filmmaking.
The Best Documentary Award is presented to the best feature-length documentary film by or about Asian Americans or Asian Canadians, as selected by a three-person jury. The winner will be announced at the Closing Night Screening on March 19, 2009.
Click here for the full list of nominated films. Past Documentary Award Winners.
The Documentary Jury
SANTHOSH DANIEL is Director of Programs for the Global Film Initiative, a funder and distributer of cinema from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. Mr. Daniel has worked as a public relations and marketing consultant in the arts, entertainment, health and technology sectors, and as a writer and editor collaborated with visual artists and filmmakers on projects in the United States, India, Mexico. He has a B.A. in English from the University of Washington, and an M.F.A. in English from the University of Iowa.
SATSUKI INA is a filmmaker, Professor Emeritus in the School of Education at California State University, Sacramento and a licensed psychotherapist specializing in trauma and cross-cultural counseling. She was born in the Tule Lake Segregation Center during WWII, and much of her professional, academic, and creative efforts are focused around the long-term psychological impact of the internment. Her films include Children of the Camps, which was nominated for a Northern California Emmy and broadcast nationally on PBS, and more recently, From A Silk Cocoon.
EDDIE WONG is the Executive Director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation (AIISF). Prior to his work with AIISF, Wong was the Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media and also spent many years working in electoral politics, serving as the Western Regional Director of the National Rainbow Coalition. Wong is also one of the founders of Visual Communications, the nation’s oldest Asian American media arts organization, and the maker of many films including Wong Singsaang and Chinatown Two-Step.
