CAAMFest, known prior to 2013 as the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF), is presented every March in the

San Francisco Bay Area The San Francisco Bay Area, often referred to as simply the Bay Area, is a populous region surrounding the San Francisco, San Pablo, and Suisun Bay estuaries in Northern California. The Bay Area is defined by the Association of Bay Area Go ...

in the United States as the nation’s largest showcase for new Asian American and

Asian Asian may refer to: * Items from or related to the continent of Asia: ** Asian people, people in or descending from Asia ** Asian culture, the culture of the people from Asia ** Asian cuisine, food based on the style of food of the people from Asi ...

films. It annually presents approximately 130 works in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

Berkeley Berkeley most often refers to: *Berkeley, California, a city in the United States **University of California, Berkeley, a public university in Berkeley, California * George Berkeley (1685–1753), Anglo-Irish philosopher Berkeley may also refer ...

and San Jose. The festival is organized by the

Center for Asian American Media The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) was founded in 1980. The San Francisco-based organization, formerly known as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), has grown into the largest organization dedicated to the adv ...

History

CAAMFest traces its roots to Asian CineVision’s

New York Asian American Film Festival New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator ...

, begun in 1978. From 1981 to 1984, ACV spun off a traveling version of their festival that toured the U.S. CAAM partnered with ACV to showcase their traveling festival in San Francisco, adding in other films by local filmmakers to help round out the program. The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) was founded in 1982New and Improved! Asian American Showcase Rebrands as CAAMFest , International Documentary Association
/ref> as a joint production between Asian CineVision and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). There was no festival in 1985; beginning in 1986 the festival was organized by CAAM. Although the festival originally began with exclusively Asian American work, over the course of the 1990s, they expanded to include works from Asian filmmakers, reflecting an attention to the increasingly transnational forms of media moving between Asia and America. With the expansion of the festival, CAAM announced in January 2013 the name change of the SFIAAFF to CAAMFest. The new Festival will showcase film as well as other avenues of artistic expression and community engagement, such as music, food, and interactive workshops.

Locations

While the majority of the films at the festival screen at the Sundance Kabuki in

Japantown is a common name for Japanese communities in cities and towns outside Japan. Alternatively, a Japantown may be called J-town, Little Tokyo or , the first two being common names for Japantown, San Francisco, Japantown, San Jose and Little ...

and the

Castro Theatre The Castro Theatre is a historic movie palace in San Francisco that became San Francisco Historic Landmark #100 in September 1976. Located at 429 Castro Street in the Castro District, it was built in 1922 with a California Churrigueresque fa� ...

in San Francisco, many films are also screened at the

Pacific Film Archive The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from ...

in Berkeley and at the Camera 3 Downtown Cinemas in San Jose.

Awards and premieres

To underscore its commitment to supporting Asian American filmmakers and recognizing their achievements, the SFIAAFF inaugurated in 2005 a

juried competition A juried competition is a competition in which participants' work is judged by a person or panel of persons convened specifically to judge the participants' efforts, either by the competition's stated rubric or by a subjective set of criteria depen ...

in two categories as well as audience awards. In 2010 Emmy-nominated documentary '' Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy'' made its world premiere at the SFIAAFF and went on to win Best Documentary at the festival. The documentary film ''

Linsanity Jeremy Shu-How Lin (born August 23, 1988) is a Taiwanese-American professional basketball player who last played for the Guangzhou Loong Lions of the Chinese Basketball Association (CBA). He unexpectedly led a winning turnaround with the N ...

'' premiered at CAAMFest on March 14, 2013, and won several audience awards. The Vietnamese comedy film '' How to Fight in Six Inch Heels'' had its U.S. premiere at CAAMFest on March 13, 2014.

References

*Heymont, George
"A Touch of Aloha, A Pinch of Japan"
''Huffington Post'', 2014 (ambiguous date format)

External links

*{{official, https://caamfest.com/
Asian Music Circuit (UK)SFIAAFF Documentary
Asian-American culture in San Francisco Film festivals in the San Francisco Bay Area Asian-American film festivals Film festivals established in 1982 1982 establishments in California