This week, I was privileged to attend the Asian Pacific American Film Festival occurring in APA310.  Although all of the films were excellent, and all raised interesting issues about the roles of the APA person in today’s society, I selected two on which I wish to focus:  Debra Gee’s Slaying the Dragon and Jennifer Phang’s Love, Ltd.    Both of these strongly explore the role of the Asian American women, in very different ways.
 Slaying the Dragon was created in 1987, and in many ways, it shows it.  It is a documentary which aims to chronicle the role of Asian women in American filmmaking, but it feels like a timeline cut short.  Still, it does a good job of detailing the evolution of the Asian female in film.  One of the interesting facts I discovered in the course of watching Slaying the Dragon was that frequently, white actresses played Asian women because of anti-miscegenation laws that were in place at the time.  I had always assumed that the reason for this was simply that the white actresses were better known.
The documentary does a good job of detailing the influences of several major films such as The World of Susie Wong, a 1960 film starring Nancy Kwan and William Holden, which inflamed the stereotypes of Asian women as prostitutes.   Slaying the Dragon also discusses the importance of Flower Drum Song, an all Asian-American musical, which though it provided some variety of roles for the women, tended to pigeonhole them into certain stereotypes.  It even points out the strong impact Connie Chung had on the role of women in the media, adding one more stereotype to fit the women into.
While Slaying the Dragon does a fine job of detailing this history of Hollywood pigeonholing Asian women into various stereotypes, it might be helpful for them to point out that women in general in Hollywood have been placed in the virgin/whore paradigm for many years.  It would be interesting to see how much this documentary would be changed if it were created today, and whether a different conclusion would be drawn.
 Love, Ltd. Is a much more recent production (1999) and so has a more au courant feel to it.  It is the story of a young Asian American woman attempting to break the news that she is a lesbian, and involved in a committed relationship with a woman, to her family.  She is thwarted along the way by her younger brother, who confesses himself to be gay, and her mother’s homophobic reaction.  In the end, the whole damned family (except for the mother and possibly the youngest child) turns out to be gay, in a comedic twist.
 The film is oddly constructed, interspersed with a number of shots that are not explained until later in the film.  The cinematography seems to embrace sensuality, and worship the human body.  We are treated to lovingly detailed shots of a woman combing her hair and embracing her sleeping lover.  The film lingers over the body of a young man playing basketball, forcing the moment into slow motion, as if to appreciate his youthful beauty more fully.  There are ceiling shots of a karate class, embracing the vigor of the martial arts.  I cannot quite decide, however, if the lyricism of the film is helped or harmed by the final sequence of the two female lovers arguing, which is shown with no sound.  At the time it seemed strange and off-putting, but upon later reflection, it seemed more in harmony with the rest of the film.
 There are a number of uniquely Asian American issues in this film, as well as a lot of universal ones (after all, isn’t it a little strange that the whole family except the mother is gay, and they’re the ones who feel isolated?).  The stereotype of the overbearing Asian mother is dusted off and examined, revealing a wealth of complexity in this woman, who in trying to keep her family whole and healthy is driving them further apart.  The idea of an Asian American woman’s sexuality is dissected, though to tell the truth, the two actresses portraying lesbians were so lovingly natural together, it was impossible to be shocked or unsettled by them.  Another theme presented in this movie is the Asian American family; this theme is explored by presenting a charming suburban family, who just happen to be mostly gay.  This is a time-honored tactic – if you want to get people to look at something in a new way, show them people who are different from us, but turn out to be just like us or people who are just like us, but turn out to be fundamentally different.
 All in all, this is an excellent film festival, highly challenging and provocative.  I highly recommend it to anyone who would like to cut Hollywood’s dull fare with something a little sharper.