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When the Boston Museum of Fine Arts screened the documentary film "Kelly Loves Tony" earlier this year, many of the Asian American young people in the audience were inspired by the determination and resilience of Kelly Saeteurn, one of the film's main characters. Saeteurn is a 17-year-old daughter of Iu Mien refugees from Laos who was planning to go to college when she unexpectedly became pregnant with her boyfriend Tony Saelio's child. After the baby is born and the couple moves into Tony's parents house, Kelly begins a long struggle to balance her roles as mother, wife, and college student. What sets "Kelly Loves Tony" apart from most documentaries is director Spencer Nakasako's decision to give Tony and Kelly a video camera to film their daily lives through this critical period. The film works because it explores such universal subjects as the fragility of relationships, the struggle to maintain personal dreams in the face of adversity, and the conflicts that arise when the values of youths and adults clash.

While many of the young people watching the film may not have identified with the prospects of being a teenage parent, they did identify with Kelly's determination to hold on to her dream of attending college and her insistence on maintaining her independence in a household where Asian and American values were bound to collide. Like many of the young people in the audience, Kelly was the daughter of immigrants and had internalized both American values and traditional Iu Mien beliefs.

"You have taught me about adversity, about making the best of you situation," said one member of the audience to Saeteurn, who, along with her husband Tony, had traveled from California to attend the screening. "There's really not much out there for us (Asians) to see," said another. "You are a very strong woman and I admired you watching the film."

"Kelly Loves Tony" is one of many recent films by Asian American directors that set out to explore the struggles and concerns of Asian Americans, particularly the young. Last year's Boston Asian American Film Festival at the MFA, for example, included several films exploring generational conflicts and the impact of race on the lives of Asian Americans. In "Yellow" by Chris Chan Lee, a young Korean American struggles to deal with his father's high expectations and the cultural gaps that make communication between father and son strained and ultimately dishonest. Similar themes are developed in Rea Tajiri's "Strawberry Fields," which tells the story of a Japanese American teenager who sets off on a quintessential American road journey, only to end up face to face with her parents' unspoken history and confinement in an internment camp during World War II.

In the past, mainstream culture has offered few media images of Asian Americans or explorations of the kind of conflicts and situations commonly experienced by them while growing up in America. Mainstream films in America have largely reflected the concerns and conditions experienced by the white majority. And while African American filmmakers such as Spike Lee have finally started to document in feature films some of the struggles of African Americans, Asian concerns have generally remained invisible. In recent years, the only mainstream film to offer a glimpse of a diverse group of Asian American characters was Wayne Wang's "Joy Luck Club."

While some of today's Asian American filmmakers are eager to put on film the kind of concerns that will likely resonant with young people growing up Asian in American, others are making films that are not overtly ethnic. Those who shy away from making ethnic films suggest they could very well make an ethnic film at some point in their careers, while those leaning toward more personal stories don't rule out making mainstream films in the future.

"A lot of us grew up with the same story, the same issues that haven't really been addressed as a film issue," says Chi-Ho Lee, who has worked as a cameraman on an independent film and recently tried to film his own script in Boston. Family expectations, cultural differences between parent and child, speaking Chinese with family and English with friends, social expectations, and model minority stereotypes are the kind of issues he believes should be explored in films.

"As a Chinese American I think I do have a responsibility to address some of the issues," adds Lee, who came to the US from Hong Kong when he was 8 and grew up in Florida. Lee doesn't rule out making films later in his life that have little to do with being Asian American, but for now he is intent on exploring more personal material.

Lee says he admires the films of Chris Chan Lee and Spencer Nakasako because they speak to his own experience as an Asian American. He wishes he could have seen similar films while growing up in Florida, but recalls that it was almost impossible at the time to find films "with believable Asian characters."

"If Asian American don't make films about Asian Americans who will?" asks Lee. "Certainly no one else in Hollywood is going to." Lee notes that while Hong Kong directors are making inroads in Hollywood, there's a big difference between Hong Kong directors and Chinese-American ones. It's a distinction, he suggests, that may often be lost on the mainstream world. "They're Chinese but they're not Chinese-American," he says of Hong Kong directors. "They're two totally different animals."

While some criticism has been leveled at Asian American films for rehashing themes to the point of cliché, Lee argues that such criticism doesn't take into account the fact that mainstream films also overwork an array of tried and true themes. "I hear that a lot," he says. "But how many cowboy movies have been around," he says. Asian American concerns that first appeared in films only five years ago are suddenly "being called hackneyed and done," says Lee.

"There's still so much Asian American history" that hasn't been explored in films, he adds. "They just don't see it as important, maybe because we don't make a stink about it."

Earlier this year, Lee tried to film a script he wrote about an Asian youth who is involved with both a Chinese woman and a Caucasian woman. While he found two producers who were willing to back his project, he soon found himself at odds with his partners. "I guess we had different motives," says Lee. "We just weren't going down the same avenue."

"My personal goal was to tell the story and hopefully get people to think about certain things," particularly the kind of issues that crop up for young people growing up Asian American, says Lee, who explains that he and the producers eventually went their separate ways.

Bonnie Wong, who was one of those producers, believes that it's important for Asian American filmmakers to take fresh approaches to their material. The founder of her own production company in Boston, Wong points out that many of today's Asian American filmmakers are dealing with issues of cultural identity and the experience of "being an Asian in America." Are they more Chinese or more American? is the kind of question that often crops up in this material, she says.

Wong, however, worries that some of these filmmakers may be overworking certain themes. Asian males, for example, are dealing with the issue of being marginalized in a society largely dominated by a white male sensibility. "I think there have been a lot of films that have been made about that, but it's no longer fresh," she says. "With me it's no longer original."

Wong argues that Asian filmmakers should be moving beyond such preoccupations and exploring themes that will appeal to a broader audience. "I like more universal story ideas and I don't really care where they come from or what they're about," says Wong, who is currently writing a screenplay.

Wong says she prefers films that "reach out to more than one group of people" and argues that it's the story rather than the ethnic content of a film that matters most. She worries that not many people outside the Asian community would be been able to relate to the content of some ethnic films. "That was one of the things that had bothered me about the film I was working on," she says.

"I don't want to be pegged as an Asian American filmmaker," adds Wong, who points out that the Taiwanese film director Ang Lee has been making films that have nothing to do with his Asian background. She says the issue has spilled over into Hollywood, where TriStar's Asian head of production, Chris Lee, is being criticized for not making more Asian American films.

Quentin Lee, a Los Angeles-based director, says the Asian American content of his films is coincidental. "Sometimes it's very stifling to be always put in these categories," says Lee.

The director of "Flow" and the recent critically acclaimed film "Shopping for Fangs," Lee says his ultimate goal is to produce films that have a universal sensibility. "Shopping for Fangs," for example, is a psychological thriller with both Asian and non-Asians characters.

Lee, who recently served as assistant to director Peter Chan on the film "Love Letter," which was filmed in Rockport last summer, notes that Asian Americans are a diverse group and include Asians born and raised in America and those who came here at a later age. Lee, who came to the US from Hong Kong when he was a teenager, believes that real differences exist between the two groups that may influence their approach to filmmaking.

Those who grew up in America, for example, often become upset if others treat them as being less than 100 percent American. The American-born are also more likely to be eaten up by the racial politics of the US. People who arrive here at a later age, on the other hand, are less concerned about how people define them or whether they're considered 100 percent American. "I never expected that right," he says, adding that the American-born sometimes tend to be "a little provincial" in this regard. Lee says there needs to be a bridge between the groups and an openness to a "more fluid" Asian American identity, particularly in regard to filmmaking. Lee suggests he tries to bring such a sensibility to his own films.

While Boston filmmaker Ellie Lee has written a script based on autobiographical material, she has so far avoided making films that deal directly with her ethnic background. Lee, for example has made "A Look," an animated short that won MTV's Free Your Mind Competition, and the award-winning "Repetition Compulsion," an animated documentary on homelessness and domestic violence that recently appeared on PBS's P.O.V. series.

"I feel like it's a little overly self-indulgent for me to make films just about being Asian American," says Lee, who worries that an audience may not be there for such personal films. "But I think being Asian American always influences my work. Like being an immigrant and those experiences always inform my empathy for my character."

While the African American director Spike Lee has made ethnic films that have reached a large white audience, she says there has yet to appear an Asian American director who has done the same. Selling ethnic Asian American films is also difficult because Asians make up only about 2 percent of the movie-going audience in the US. She suggests that this explains in part why few people have seen such films as "Yellow."

"I don't know how they find an audience," she says of Asian American films, adding "I've only been able to see them through film festivals."

Like many Asian Americans, San Francisco-based filmmaker Anita Chang says she has found few images in mainstream American life that speak directly to Asian Americans. She suggests it's important for Asian filmmakers to change this by creating images of Asians that haven't been seen before by a broader audience. "I see so few images that really speak to me," she says.

At the same time, she adds, filmmakers need to be aware of the fact that certain themes over time may become clichés and need to be refreshed. "I definitely feel there should be fresh perspectives on film," says Chang, who attended Tufts University and grew up in Springfield.

That, however, doesn't mean that filmmakers should be fixated on commercial considerations or avoid making films that deal with ethnic material. It's important, she says, for filmmakers to stay true to their artistic impulses and visions.

Chang, whose films "One Hundred Eggs a Minute" and "Mommy What's Wrong?" were shown at the MFA this year, describes her work as being "politically motivated but aesthetically based."

In "One Hundred Eggs a Minute," she focused on a woman who grew up working in her parents' fortune cookie factory. The film explores issues common to the immigrant experience, such as the conflict between family obligations and the pursuit of individual goals.

Chang notes that the Asian American population has largely consisted of immigrants and perhaps hasn't been rooted in American life long enough to see its artistic life flourish. Focused on more practical concerns, immigrant parents generally don't encourage their children to go into the arts. She believes Asian Americans will make more significant contributions to the arts "as those ties to the old world loosen and people become more secure economically."

"I think it's getting there," she says. "It's like growing pains right now." Chang points out that some Asian filmmakers have produced "debut films" that will likely lead to more mature ones.

"It's going to happen," she says.

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