Date: Saturday, August 1, 2020 | Time: 6PM to 8PM
Encore Screening: Thursday, August 13, 2020 | Time: 6PM to 8PM
Since 2004, the CUNY Asian American Film Festival (AAFF) has recognized and awarded over $12,800 in cash prizes to student filmmakers enrolled at the City University of New York, including City College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Lehman College, College of Staten Island, and Queens College. The CUNY AAFF helps to promote the artistic visual talents and stimulate communication among CUNY students who are separated by the different campuses, and serve as a central location to display their creative works. Past participants have also had their films screened at the Asian American International Film Festival.
On the evening of the Festival, all winners and runner-ups will remain anonymous until after a screening of selected films that have been reviewed by our distinguished panel of judges. Following the screening will be an award ceremony and Q&A session with the filmmakers.
Winner ($200) and runner-up ($100) prizes will be awarded for each of the following categories: Fiction | Documentary
AAARI encourages all currently enrolled (or recently graduated in Spring/Fall 2019) CUNY undergraduate and graduate students, Asian and non-Asian, to participate in this great opportunity.
Festival Program
Documentary Films
Isabelle Yank (Hunter College/CUNY) – Love, Isabelle
Due to China’s One-Child Policy, over 267,000 children were adopted by families from different countries. Isabelle was adopted as a baby from China and grew up in New York City. This is her letter to her biological parents after 22 years of being apart.
Best Documentary
Wendy Cong Zhao (Hunter College/CUNY) – My First Sessions
An animated, experimental documentary about a young Chinese woman’s first experience going to therapy at her American school.
Tie – Runner-up Documentary
Or Szyflingier (NYC College of Technology/CUNY) – The SoHo Memory Project
New York City’s SoHo neighborhood has transformed from a once warehouse artist district in the 1960s into now a commercialized upscale hub of fashion, retail, and food. Through footage, photos, and archival material from neighborhood residents, SoHo native Yukie Ohta articulates the importance of archiving SoHo’s past to better reflect its future. The film is told through Ohta’s experiences growing up in SoHo and starting a memory project that preserves the history of the neighborhood, and acts as a model for other parts of the city experiencing gentrification.
Tie – Runner-up Documentary
Rumi Lee (City College/CUNY) – Unconditional
A character-driven short documentary that explores a mother’s life with her disabled daughter and how she learns a meaningful lesson through her.
Fiction Films
Jakar Morales (City College/CUNY) – 아카데미 Academy
A young group of soldiers and students must escape the war-torn school building, but the hallways are not empty…
Best Fiction
Razid Season [Md Razid] (City College/CUNY) – Kaddish
A young Ashkenazim named Akiva risks a journey through Miechów in Nazi-occupied Poland to fulfill his obligation of honoring his deceased mother on the anniversary of her death. He gets arrested by the Nazis and finds an elderly rabbi he knows while in custody. The rabbi, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, is hoping to escape Poland for the promised land.
Runner-up Fiction
Nobuhiro Futaki (Brooklyn College/CUNY) – Alienation Sogai
Kenji, who studies combat in New York, gets an unexpected phone call from his father in Japan for the first time since he came to America. It’s hard for Kenji to express his honest feelings with his father while putting up a good front over the phone conversation.
Submission Guidelines
2020 Film Festival Submission Form (Download)
Person submitting must be a currently enrolled CUNY undergraduate or graduate student, or recently graduated in Spring/Fall 2019. (Copy of CUNY College ID and current semester’s class schedule, or proof of recent graduation, is required.) Submitter, or their authorized representative, must be available to attend the Festival (scheduled for June 2020, in-person or virtually), or else they will forfeit their cash award prize.
Film submission must satisfy any one of the following two criteria:
- Production (exclusively or majority-made by CUNY personnel) involving at least one CUNY Asian personnel in a key position, ie. Director, Producer, Writer, or Editor
- Contains an Asian American / Asian theme or narrative
All submissions must:
- Create a 30 second to 1 minute trailer
- Film and trailer must be in downloadable digital format (H.264, 4:3 or 16.9 ratio, 256kps AAC), and sent via film sharing service, ie. WeTransfer
- E-mail download link, submission form, college ID and current class schedule, and film description
- Film must include the following title slates:
- 5 second black video
- “2020 CUNY Asian American Film Festival”, Title of film, Category, Running Time, Your Name
- Must include credits of all individuals working on the project
Film submissions must be received by e-mail to wtam [at] aaari.info no later than 5PM EST on Friday, May 29, 2020. Anything received afterwards will not be accepted. (In the event of a submission deadline extension, you may submit an updated version of your film for consideration.) Limit of one entry per person. All entries must be accompanied by an entry form. Missing material will result in disqualification.
Festival Chairman
Ryoya Terao
Panel of Judges
John Acosta, Patrick Chen, Young Cheong, Vinit Parmar, JT Takagi, Larry Tung & Jennifer Betit Yen
Coordinator
William Tam
Technical Assistance
Antony Wong & Zhu-Hui Wu
Media Sponsor
