Welcome from the Artistic Director
March 28, 2022
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Rise and shine!
It’s our first in-person Spring Showcase since 2019, and our eyeballs are craving rainbows.
As the sunny cousin of the big San Diego Asian Film Festival, the annual Spring Showcase brings the hits, laughs, and thrills. This year in particular is all about the icons. We bookend our showcase with legendary figures: Anita Mui, queen of song and style, who personified the Hong Kong superstar in the 1980s and 90s, and Chol Soo Lee, social justice icon, whose wrongful imprisonment sparked an Asian American movement in the 1970s and 80s. We also shine a spotlight on Kinuyo Tanaka, the well-known actress of Ozu and Mizoguchi, but also an underseen filmmaker, who was one of the world’s rare female directors in the 1950s and 60s. Icons also dot the cover of the new book RISE: A Pop History of Asian America from the Nineties to Now, and we invite audiences to join the book’s authors in a special conversation about the actors, musicians, athletes, and trendsetters that make up Asian American popular culture. We’re here for the stars, star-makers, and stargazers that keep Asian cinema shining.
— Brian Hu, Artistic Director
