While movie theater blockbusters are cool and all, there is a whole world of film out there that may be just as enjoyable––and you may actually learn a thing or two. Sometimes, you just need to look in your own city.
The Boston Asian American Film Festival (BAAFF) is a well-established cultural giant in the Boston area. Going on its 11th national summit, the festival will be running from October 22nd to October 25th this fall, with three to five feature-length films and three short specials.
The films that are featured are pretty big deals in the movie world, too. The main film feature will be The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, which was created by the Oscar-nominated three time-Sundance award-winning Arthur Dong. He will be at the screening, which will take place on Saturday the 24th.
Two other features include Korean teen romantic comedy Seoul Searching, which has won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival, the LA Film Festival Gala Presentation, and scored the CAAMFest Audience Award, as well as South Asian comedy Miss India America, winner of the CAAMFest Comcast Narrative Jury Award and the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival Best Screenplay Award. 
Jose Soto, a student at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the coordinator for the film festival, said, “The festival is trying to be more culturally diverse, hence the pieces on India and so forth. We will not have subtitles in the films either, and there is some use of other languages, but the bulk of it is in English.”
Soto explained that UMass Boston has had a close relationship with BAAFF for the past five years, and that they continue to work together. A key connection is an Asian American Studies course here at UMass Boston: AsAmSt 370. A requirement for students of the course is to create short films about their lives. Some students submit to a contest hosted by BAAFF, called ShortWaves.
Every year, a participant from the class has been a finalist, and the majority of winners are UMass Boston students.
“Our theme is illustrating what home is in America and trying to battle the perpetual foreigner stereotype,” Soto said.
Keep your schedules cleared for a weekend of award-winning films and a cultural experience for people of all ethnicities!