SAAFF Highlights Deeply Human Experiences with Excellent PNW Filmmaking

The Seattle Asian American Film Festival returned for its 13th year this month. The festival was composed of several programs, including an opening night centered on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a Native Hawaiian Showcase, and a Queer AF Shorts collection. Another highlight of the festival was the Bring it Home: Pacific Northwest Shorts program, held on June 21 at the Broadway Performance Hall. Featuring 11 films, the program was a celebration of the diversity of AAPI experiences in the Pacific Northwest. 

Several documentaries highlighted local Seattle stories. Preah Kanloung is a profile on Ith Lom, a Cambodian American elder living in South Seattle and a leader in her Theravada Buddhist temple’s spiritual life. Filmmaker Chanthadeth Chanthalangsy, Lom’s grandson, said that it was important to “let the person with the stories tell the stories” in honoring his grandmother and her community. 

Andy Kimura and Taky Kimura in Taky Kimura: Heart of the Dragon

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In the documentary Taky Kimura: Heart of the Dragon, we follow the life of Taky Kimura, a longtime friend and student of Bruce Lee. Kimura met Lee soon after returning to Seattle from forced displacement in a Japanese incarceration camp. In the film, Kimura speaks about Lee’s philosophy behind Jeet Kune Do as a source of empowerment for him in the aftermath of a deeply dehumanizing experience. Co-director Jamil Suleman stated that the interview footage in the doc spans ten years. While Kimura has died since the filming of the doc, his son Andy continues his father’s and Bruce Lee’s martial arts legacy at Jun Fan Gung Fu Seattle. 

Grief was also a potent theme among this collection of shorts. Two of the most powerful character-driven pieces centered on this topic. In one, Boise-based filmmaker Daehwan Cho’s film Days After, Cho plays a professor who has recently lost his partner and child. With virtually no dialogue, the film follows the professor as he goes through daily routines over and over, routines that shift and change as the days and weeks go by. He fills his house with plants, gets a dog, takes to running, and finally stops setting out an extra plate with toast. Days After dives into the devastating mundanity of grief, and how small shifts in one’s environment can signal profound emotional shifts. 

Another standout for its impressive character work was Sorry for Your Cost, which follows Ren (Adeline Lo), a teenager whose plans to attend theater school are thrown into chaos when her mom (Olivia Cheng) dies in a car accident. As her family plans for her mom’s burial, they deal with a financially exploitive, villainous funeral company who would require Ren to give up her plans of theater school.

Vancouver-based director Rosie Choo Pidcock said that she developed the concept while planning her mother’s funeral and seeing how cost-oriented the funeral business was, in a way that often leaves families behind. Stellar performances ground this film. In one scene, Ren’s mom films her running Shakespeare lines with her dad (Simon Chen), turning the camera at herself to make silly faces. The sheer amount of love in this scene is incredibly palpable as it captures the magic of family chaos. 

Even while tackling challenging emotional themes, the PNW Shorts program also contained some excellent moments of comedy and levity. In Meaningful Meals, directed by Franco Duerme, the main character (Chiara Opal) lives a mundane life, eating frozen burritos every day and feeling bored at their job cleaning cars. The sequences are shot in black and white, adding to the feeling of lifelessness. But, one day, waking up from a vivid hunger-induced dream about their mom’s lumpias, they dig out their mom’s recipe from storage. And, much like in The Wizard of Oz, upon cooking lumpias, the world of this story suddenly turns technicolor and vibrant.

That is, until our main character runs out of lumpias. But just when we feared hope was lost, they invite some friends over and cook dinner for them, and the joy returns. It’s a simple, heartwarming story of the power and meaning of food. 

Kpojo Kparyea and Megan Huynh in Bab’s Bouquets

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Babs’ Bouquets was another comedic highlight shot in and around the city of Seattle. The film was directed by Jasira Andrus as part of Northwest Film Forum’s ACTION! Narrative Apprenticeship Program. The story centers a grieving husband (Frank Lawler) who becomes a crucial patron of a local flower shop as he buys daily bouquets in honor of his late wife Babs. But when he man finds a new girlfriend (Ally Murphy), the flower shop employees, played by Kpojo Kparyea and Megan Huynh, enact a whimsical, darkly funny stunt to scam their customer into resuming his regular patronage.

Andrus explained that she grew up watching comedy, but found frustration with “Black women being the butt of the joke,” and instead wanted her BIPOC women characters to be the funny ones driving the humor of the story. With great performances and fantastical production design that features stunning arrangements from local small business Blue Poppy Floral, Babs’ Bouquets is an excellent comedy with Seattle spirit. 

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With plenty of fantastic AAPI content to show off, SAAFF is hosting virtual screenings of their programming through June 29.