Lightbox Film Center
3701 Chestnut St, Philadelphia
US Premiere Director: Mark Bochsler 91 mins | Documentary | Cambodia | Central Khmer, English What started as a genocide survivor’s dream to revive an ancient sport becomes an inspiring mission to heal a nation. Surviving Bokator is a heartfelt story about reclaiming cultural identity and building bridges between generations. Filmed over five years, the film is told through the struggle of an elder genocide survivor to resurrect the ancient Cambodian martial art of Bokator and preserve it in the nation’s youth. Through their journey, the film reaches the very core of the generational fracture happening in Cambodian communities around the world today—a fracture between genocide survivors determined to revive and maintain traditional ways and Cambodia’s youth looking to forge ahead. Filmmakers are expected in attendance for a post-film Q&A. Get Tickets
Lightbox Film Center
3701 Chestnut St, Philadelphia
Philadelphia Premiere Director: Emilie Upczak 77 mins | Drama | Trinidad and Tobago | English After the death of her father, Zhenzhen leaves China to be with her brother, who works construction on the islands of Trinidad and Tobago. Although she gets a job at a restaurant, she is forced into a compromising position when the smuggler demands more cash. Her brother promises to pay her debt, but he is unsuccessful in getting an advance from his employer, leaving Zhenzhen desperate. She asks her boss for the money. He agrees but makes Zhenzhen promise she will work it off. Help comes unexpectedly from Evelyn, who runs an art gallery in the neighborhood. But the contrast between the dark rooms above the restaurant and the blindingly white gallery calls everyone’s innocence into question. Get Tickets
In partnership with Music of Asian America Research Center and University of Pennsylvania Asian American Studies Program, we present the third annual PAAFF Conference. This year’s three-day conference explores the Music of Asian America through a series of paper presentations and interactive workshops that will run parallel to festival film programming, punctuated by two live musical showcases on Friday and Saturday nights during Opening Weekend. Bringing together filmmakers, academics, and other creatives - the PAAFF Conference presentations include many of the leading scholars on these subjects and top performing artists in their field. All conference programs are FREE and open to the public, RSVP advised due to limited seating capacity. Rob Buscher (Exhibit Curator and PAAFF Festival Director) “American Peril: Imagining the Foreign Threat” displays more than 40 original prints of anti-Asian propaganda in the United States from the 1870s to the present day. It is in four sections: (1) Chinese Exclusion and Propaganda Supporting the Annexation of the Philippines, (2) Anti- Japanese Propaganda during WWII, (3) Japan Bashing in the 1970s and 1980s, and (4) Anti-Muslim and Post-9/11 Islamophobia. This exhibit and the associated programming aim to educate the public about the complex history of Anti-Asian racism in the US and encourage audiences to think critically about contemporary political rhetoric. By placing prints from close to a 150-year span together, we hope to show both continuities and changes in U.S. racial politics. The audience will recognize how the exclusion logic, which was first applied to people of Chinese descent, came to be employed for people of Japanese descent in the early-mid 20th century and people of Middle Eastern origins in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They will also realize how malleable the concept of an “inassimilable alien” is, as they will see the term applied to everything from “coolies” to “model minorities” and from Buddhists to Muslims.
