San Diego Asian Film Festival
| Location | San Diego, California, United States |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2000 |
| Language | International |
| Website | pacarts |
The San Diego Asian Film Festival (SDAFF) is an annual event organized by Pacific Arts Movement (formerly the San Diego Asian Film Foundation) that takes place every November in San Diego, California. Founded in 2000, the festival has become the largest showcase of Asian and Asian-American cinema on the North American West Coast. The 2015 festival took place from November 5 through November 14 and screened over 130 films from 20 countries across the world.
SDAFF is the flagship event for the non-profit organization Pacific Arts Movement (Pac-Arts, formerly the San Diego Asian Film Foundation), which also puts on several other arts and culture events throughout the year. The mission of Pacific Arts Movement is to present Pan Asian media arts to San Diego residents and visitors in order to inspire, entertain and support a more compassionate society. Throughout the year, Pacific Arts Movement offers student internships, cultural literacy programs with local high schools and colleges, and a high school filmmaker project entitled “Reel Voices.” Pacific Arts Movement also teams up with several movie production and marketing companies to promote both independent and mainstream films that are inline with the mission of the organization.
SDAFF found its inception in August 2000 when it was first organized as a fundraiser by the Asian American Journalists Association. After receiving numerous film entries, both domestically and internationally, and seeing sold out crowds at its inaugural festival, Lee Ann Kim, the founding director, saw the potential of making SDAFF an organizational entity of its own. Kim teamed up with several journalists, writers, filmmakers, and community leaders to turn the film festival into the larger non-profit organization that Pacific Arts Movement is today. Since then, the org and SDAFF have consistently grown in size and recognition with each passing year.
Margaret Cho, Tamlyn Tomita, and Dante Basco
The Annual Spring Showcase, introduced in 2011 is a smaller festival than SDAFF, featuring around a dozen films each year. Notable films
Each year since 2005, Pacific Arts Movement offers students from local San Diego schools the chance to join this 12-week film internship program. The program accepts around 10 students per year. Students are paired with a mentor and helped to compose a nonfiction documentary film by the Reel Voices staff and volunteers. The final product is screened at SDAFF where the students participate in a Q&A session after the showing.
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