Polygon's 20 Best Films Born From The Asian Diaspora

Tuesday, January 15, 2019



From writer Siddhant Adlakha:

The task of exploring “Asianness” in cinema falls on a variety of shoulders. In America, “Asian” usually means you’re Chinese or Japanese, or occasionally Korean, regardless of where in East Asia you’re from. In the U.K., it means you’re Indian or Pakistani. In reality, it’s a much wider umbrella, yet at the same time, a reductive pigeonhole. Such is the burden of post-colonial identity, the idea that even as filmmakers, one’s outlook as an immigrant — or as the child or grandchild of immigrants — must, at once, adhere to certain ideas of what constitutes “Asian” while simultaneously transcending them.

“You are not Asian; you are Other,” I remember being told as a teen in Mumbai, India, Asia, while filling out an SAT form. At the time I was called this thing, this “Other” — a mere category on paper that now feels insidious — I hadn’t even made my way to America to study yet, and I was already feeling an imposed contortion on my identity. But to what degree, I wonder, do I or my American-born cousins overlap with what is largely described as Asian-American culture? We work with the language (and within the boxes) prescribed by a white, English-speaking status quo, and whether we want to or not, our work in media constitutes a tapestry of what it means to be Asian in the rest of the world. And what a year it was to make a film that would inevitably be brought under the label of Asian, regardless of intent.

In America, “Asian August” was a watershed moment, wherein the teen rom-com To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, the Kevin Kwan adaptation Crazy Rich Asians and the screen-life thriller Searching were simultaneously on screens. Yet America’s year of Asian excellence arguably began in January: Cathy Yan’s yet-unreleased Dead Pigs made waves at Sundance, leading to her being tapped to direct DC’s Birds of Prey; Chloé Zhao’s monumental Native American Western The Rider finally hit screens in April, and she was subsequently hired to make Marvel movie The Eternals. In June, Chinese-Canadian empty-nest-syndrome short Bao by Domee Shi was seen by audiences worldwide before Incredibles 2, leading to her being hired for her first feature. Chinese-American Dave Callaham is all set to write Marvel’s Shang-Chi. And while superhero movies are by no means the only indicator of cinematic success, they’re a barometer of the ways in which Hollywood is slowly but surely widening its scope.

Read the full list @ https://www.polygon.com/2018/12/20/18139166/best-asian-movies-filmmakers-2018?fbclid=IwAR0xtlaRhQDmZbIDzgtho-QlUu71aNQ2bXuJWwsv-hiY4_TDd3MQhWlzpRQ