Austin Asian American Film Festival is All Grown Up

Started in 2004 by a couple of enterprising University of Texas students, the Austin Asian American Film Festival has, in a very short period of time, grown from humble roots into a full blown cultural event. In this, its fifth year of existence, AAAFF will be showcasing some very accomplished indie filmmaking, but will also be entertaining its participants with multiple parties and a panel discussion focusing on Asian American Television programing, specifically comedic representation of Asian culture. That word "representation" seems to be the running theme of this year's festival, as the opening night documentary Hollywood Chinese pores through the history of Chinese silver screen roles, and how American filmmakers both perpetuated racial stereotypes and showcased the increasing proliferation of the Chinese-American experience through the lens of Tinseltown.

Many of this years 40+ films deal not only with how Asians and Asian-Americans are defined by outsiders, but also how they define themselves. From a short film called Henry, which deals with the difficulties of portraying your true self in internet dating, to Family Inc, a feature that follows an Asian-American filmmaker as she returns to China to run her family toy making business, and how she must deal with becoming something that she never wished to be, this year's AAAFF programming highlights the difficulties we face in asserting our own humanity in the face of other's expectations.