The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Avoids Pigeonholing Artists

Welcome to Behind the Fest, Backstage’s questionnaire series with film festival figures looking for that next big festival hit. Featuring behind-the-scenes insight from the organizers and programmers at Sundance, TIFF, Cannes, and more fests from around the globe, these tips might just hold the key to your indie film success story!

Presented by Visual Communications, the 37th installment of the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival continues its goal in showcasing the latest and greatest works from Asian and Pacific Islander artists from across the globe.

Celebrating more than 150 filmmakers virtually and across several venues in L.A., this year’s LAAPFF lineup focuses on artists making an impact in their communities, and in the safest way possible. With narrative and documentary features and an Oscar-qualifying shorts category, the fest also boasts a creative collaboration special section called C3, along with both virtual and in-person panels and conversations.

Backstage spoke with festival executive director Francis Cullado about festivals being a place to uplift all filmmakers, advice for newcomers and veterans alike, and why “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings” is a new landmark in screen entertainment representation. 

What sets the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival apart from other fests?
I think all festivals are amazing and they have their own communities, but ours is to focus on Asian Pacific experiences, whether it’s coming from an American perspective or a global perspective. It’s not just a festival for, let’s say, Asian Pacific artists and communities. It’s really for everybody. 

For example, if we programmed with Filipino American films and only Filipino Americans came, then we would have totally failed. And so we really want to make, as we know in film and cinema, these specific stories as very universal. And we want everyone who shares our values to find a home at the festival.

What are the potential benefits of filmmakers submitting to your fest?
What I’m really proud of is the communities that support our festival. And we’re not just an entertainment-forward festival. We’re a community-centered festival where you bring out the communities, and we program it with community impact and community engagement type of programming, where we understand our local, specific communities as well. There’s a problem in programming for something that’s Asian Pacific and not being monolithic.

Whether it’s an Asian-American story, or a specific Cambodian-American, Vietnamese-American story, or a story that intersects indigenous movements, climate rights, climate change, and all these different kinds of intersections and convergences...we’re not just sort of an ethnic-based festival. We don’t pigeonhole our artists; we want them to be intersected with a lot of things. And that’s really the purpose that we want to be as a festival; [we want] other artists to know the communities that their film can impact.

Are there other resources, year-round, that filmmakers should know about?
We have other programs and artist development programs. One is our Armed With a Camera Fellowship that supports emerging filmmakers, which really means young filmmakers who are still malleable, to be taught values that they can take with them down the line. Another is Digital Histories, which is a filmmaking class or workshops for older adults, which really tells you it’s never too late to become a filmmaker. These two programs have been going on for almost 20 years now. And they are celebrated at the festival every year, culminating with the finished projects.

What is something you wish more people knew about getting the most out of attending a festival?
You really need to immerse yourself in the festival. Half of the battle with having a festival, especially in a normal year having parties and galas, is really trying to be there, as genuinely as possible supporting artists to create that community—and not just for one individual’s advancement, in a way. I totally understand the nature of the game and what it is and how ego plays into it. But I really want to say this festival is, again, community-centric: how we can remove ego from this. And it’s not about who’s there for opening night, who’s our centerpiece film, who is our closing night film. For me, my ideal is these filmmakers coming together to support each other and celebrate as part of this creative community.

What is one piece of wisdom you’d give to an aspiring filmmaker?
Ultimately, I think as a person, just bringing joy to a space is always something to look for. We like to champion artists who would bring joy to spaces. Fortunately, we work with a lot of those artists and whether we push them towards other studios or other partners looking for filmmakers to work with or creators to work with, we always want to say that this person brings joy. And for me, I think we really like to play with that. We want to do this for the goodness of everybody. 

And what’s a favorite film you’ve seen recently?
“Shang-Chi,” of course. Just in terms of representation, but also being careful that it’s not the only representation. You’re always trying to be careful.... We’ve always been fighting for Asian American Pacific Islanders not to just tell their own real stories but to also tell their dreams and nightmares. And for them it’s not just Matt Damon going to Mars all the time or being saved in space. Like anybody, whoever you are: live out or tell your truths. I would say, recently, that is “Shang-Chi.”