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 G ...

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

Asian American Asian Americans are Americans of Asian ancestry (including naturalized Americans who are immigrants from specific regions in Asia and descendants of such immigrants). Although this term had historically been used for all the indigenous peopl ...

and Asian films. It annually presents approximately 130 works in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

, Berkeley 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 AMC Kabuki 8 is a movie theater in the Japan Center complex in San Francisco's Japantown neighborhood. History Kabuki Theater originally opened in 1960 as a large dinner theater. The theater was the first multiplex in San Francisco. As part of ...

in Japantown 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 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 ''Wo Ai Ni Mommy'' (''I Love You Mommy'') is a 2010 American television documentary film directed by Stephanie Wang-Breal, and distributed by ''P.O.V.''. The documentary follows the story of a then 8-year-old Chinese girl, Fang Sui Yong, who was ad ...

'' 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 Ne ...

'' premiered at CAAMFest on March 14, 2013, and won several audience awards. The Vietnamese comedy film ''

How to Fight in Six Inch Heels ''How to Fight in Six Inch Heels'' (Vietnamese: ''Am Muu Giay Got Nhon'') is a 2013 Vietnamese romantic comedy film directed by Ham Tran, and starring Kathy Uyen, who also produced and co-wrote the film based on her own source material, originall ...

'' 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