Group 4 Blog 3
In attempts at finding historical and primary documents, we visited the East Asian Library and asked if they held anything related to CAAMFest or its previous title, the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival. We were surprised to be told by the receptionist that they did not hold anything there as we remember seeing a lot of documents during our class trip. They had one article, but it had to be requested and would take a long time to get access. Instead, we were directed to the Ethnic Studies Library, as we were told they hold a lot more documents there related to CAAMFest. We have reached out to Sine Hwang Jensen, the Asian American Studies Librarian, at the Ethnic Studies library to set up a possible date where we can come in and see everything they have related to CAAMFest.
We are currently looking through the limited library sources we could get access to at this time. In our pursuit of investigating the programing from the first festival in 1982, the librarian at the East Asian Library guided us to find this really incredible source of the recording from the first film festival’s Q&A session with several of the participating directors “including talks by Wayne Wang (discussing CHAN IS MISSING), Emiko Omori (TATTOO CITY and MANONGS), Arthur Dong (SEWING WOMAN), and Ruby Yang (MIRROR POINTS). Moderated by KQED's Jane Muramoto” (Audio clip, 1982 Asian American Film Festival). This audio also presents the programming for the festival that year, and it is amazing to hear from the directors about the process behind the creation of their films. Another thing we were particularly interested in was just hearing the audience’s reactions -- when they laughed, when they applauded, etc. It is a first-hand account of the experience of the viewers that we wouldn’t be able to hear anywhere else.
After we continued to dig into the programming, we were able to dig up this photo of the directors from the Q&A of the audio clip. We all thought it was so cool that we were able to piece together audio and visuals from this event through our research. We got to really dive into the experience that was featured in the first Asian American Film Festival in San Francisco in 1982.
The picture above corresponds directly to the before-mentioned recording, with some of the participating directors of the 1982 CAAMFest doing a Q&A. One notable director in the picture is RubyYang, she premiered her film Mirror Points received great praise, and went on to become a successful director, and even won an academy award for her film The Blood of Yingzhou District in 2006.
We decided to find out which films specifically were featured at this first 1982 festival to learn more about the programming decisions for the festival. Just from observing the list, we discovered something interesting. Unlike most film festivals that we see nowadays, these movies are not from only the past year before this festival, 1981. Some films come from significantly earlier in the century (The Cheat (1915) by Cecil B. DeMille, The Dragon Painter (1924) by Sessue Hayakawa, The Tong Man (1919) by William Worthington) and also a sampling of films from the 70s as well. Our initial hypothesis was that this would be because of the Out of the Vaults retrospective program we discovered and mentioned in our last blog post where the festival will take older films that have not been shown in many years to keep the historical prevalence and meaning alive. After finding the programming list on the CAAMFest site for that year, we learned that these older films were grouped specifically as part of the “Sessue Hayakawa Retrospective,” indicating that it was a part of an attempt in line with the CAAMFest’s goals to have further exposure for relevant films.
List of films shown at 1982 CAAMFest
Regret for the Past (1980) by Shiu Hua
Bittersweet Survival (1981) by Chris Choy, J.T. Takagi
Chiang Ching: A Dance Journey (1981) by Lana Pih Jokel
Return from Silence (1981) by Shih Chung-wen
The Cheat (1915) by Cecil B. DeMille
The Dragon Painter (1924) by Sessue Hayakawa
The Tong Man (1919) by William Worthington
Chan is Missing (1982) by Wayne Wang
Tattoo City (1980) by Emiko Omori
Sewing Woman (1982) by Arthur Dong
I am the Master of My Boat (1977) by Lambert Yam
Mirror Points (1982) by Ruby Yang
Manongs (1979) by Curtis Choy and Chris Chow
We also noticed that the majority of these films would be classified as “shorts” due to their run time, and after hearing one of the directors in the Q&A discuss the budgeting, a mere $7,000 to shoot the film, makes sense why they were not feature-length. It also shows something interesting about how the festival and organization have grown over the years and its importance to the creators and the people participating. If at the time, only a handful of shorts were funded from this incredible endeavor to establish the festival, it does say something about how much they were valued at the time vs now seeing a much larger endowment, feature-length films, and the most recent film-festival screening about 60 films. The prevalence and importance of this festival have continued to grow with each year.
With the help of the libraries, we also found a newspaper article from 1997 reviewing the programming of that year’s festival. We wanted to mention this here because they chose to screen one of the same films from 1987’s programming: The Cheat (1915) by Cecil B. DeMille. This shows how the festival wants to continue to make these films available to audiences and not leave them to be forgotten by the times by having recurring showings. They’re not just done with a film after showing it once. This article clipping also shows how the festival is actively searching for new content to show with the “recovered print of 1936 Japanese classic Whispering Pavement” (1997 newspaper clipping).
Sources:
1982 Asian American Film Festival Programming and Director Q&A, part 1 and 2: https://archive.org/details/cbpf_000010
CAAMFest’s own remembering of the 1982 festival’s programming; Directors Q&A picture source: https://caamedia.org/blog/2015/02/25/inaugural-film-festival-1982/
1997 newspaper article discussing the programming for that year’s CAAMFest; article picture source: https://www-proquest-com.libproxy.berkeley.edu/docview/963094562?pq-origsite=primo
What a cool dive into different resources! Thank you for sharing. It’s very exciting to see how your group has learned to navigate the libraries and also to work with these primary sources. Since you are researching CAAMfest, have you gone to the BAMPFA film study center yet to make a research appointment, and contacted Jason Sanders, the film studies specialist there (info on our bCourses website)? The PFA library and the Ethnic studies library will be great resources for your project.
ReplyDeleteThe audio recording sounds very exciting. What did they talk about during the Q&A? What struck your group about the audience reactions?
The list of the films shown in 1982 is also really interesting. Some things that you may want to consider as you continue your research: which of these films were made by directors and production companies in the US, and which ones were made abroad? Were any of them Chinese-language films, and how did the film festival describe the different films in terms of its historical and cultural context? You may want to watch 1 or 2 of them, perhaps Chan is Missing, the Ruby Yang films you brought up, and also The Cheat, which we talked about when Stephen Gong came to class last week.
I highly recommend that your group attend the upcoming Chan is Missing screening on 3/30, Wednesday at our school’s theater, BAMPFA. We have free first-come first-serve for students in our class for that screening. It would be good material for your group to include in your blog and research report later, and a neat way to relive that film screening experience and to consider how it might have been viewed back in the 1980s. I believe the film first screened at BAMPFA!
- Linda Zhang