PAAFF is excited to present a selection of home movies collected in the San Francisco Bay Area spanning 1920s-1970s and featuring Chinese American families. Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) Executive Director Stephen Gong will narrate this program, which will also include live musical accompaniment by Chinese multi-instrumentalist Qin Qian and her band. If memories are food for the soul, home movies are the breadcrumbs we drop to find our way back. Unfortunately for many Asian American families who immigrated in the early 20th century or earlier, there is very little home movie footage that shows their unique experiences in this country. CAAM’s Memories to Light project is an effort to collect, digitize, and exhibit Asian American home movies from the bygone film era. PAAFF is also collecting home movies on behalf of the Memories to Light project in the formats of 8mm, Super-8, and 16mm. Films will be digitized at no cost to the owner. If you have questions about adding your films to the collection, please contact: Wing So at [email protected]. Tickets Festival Pass

A remote archipelago of hundreds of tiny volcanic islands in the western Pacific, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) is an independent nation of 100,000 citizens and a protectorate of the United States. In recent years, the country has become a “recruiter’s paradise” for the US military, especially since 9/11. Yet they have lost fives times more soldiers, per capita, than any US state. The film captures a tightly knit island community — a microcosm of economic, social and political change—as the high price for military service in a foreign nation’s wars cuts deep. Through an intricate web of the personal journeys undertaken by Pacific Islander soldiers, the film illustrates the larger story of a remote region whose interests are caught in the ever-changing tides of international politics. Who are these virtually unknown foreign soldiers fighting America’s wars? What does it mean for the United States to use, and practically discard, foreign citizens from their military? What happens to Micronesian veterans, and their families, when they return home and cannot access their benefits (healthcare, treatment for PTSD, loans, etc)? What is the future of these islands that exist at the mercy of foreign superpowers and strategic military interests? Director Nathan Fitch expected in attendance for post-film Q&A. Tickets Festival Pass

Directed by Ric Burns, Li-Shin Yu Co-produced by Center for Asian American Media, this film underscores important connections between the Chinese Exclusion Act and the history of US immigration. By examining the socio-economic and geo-political forces that led to the Act, the film uncovers its unmistakable and wide-ranging consequences on national attitudes towards race, culture, politics, and society. At its core this is a film about American identity, tracing the arc of what has defined being American from the time the US was a fledgling republic through its astronomical rise as a world superpower. This film documents in fascinating detail the events leading to, consequences, and continuing impact of the only federal legislation in US history to single out and name a specific race and nationality for exclusion from immigration and citizenship. The second half of this documentary will be shown after the Memories to Light Program, which explores a more recent history of Chinese Americans through a collection of home movies. Tickets Festival Pass