10th Anniversary Retrospective

Oct 18, 01:46 AM by administrator

How It All Started

by Barbara Lee, VAFF founder & president

One decade, 10 years, 3652 days, 87,648 hours, or 5,258,880 minutes, it’s hard to believe that it’s been this long since the first Vancouver Asian Film Festival was held at Robson Square Conference Centre in 1997. Since 2000, VAFF has found a new home at Cinemark Tinseltown – at the junction of Gastown, Yaletown and Chinatown. A fitting location as VAFF represents the cross-section of all these Vancouver communities – diversity, growth and heritage.

I remember coming back from Seattle in 1995, excited after attending my first Seattle Asian American Film Festival, eager to volunteer for Vancouver’s equivalent film festival. To my dismay, nothing like it existed in Vancouver or Canada at that time, even though such festivals had been in existence for almost 20 years in San Francisco and New York. So with the enthusiasm and naivety of youth, I recruited a few other idealists to embark on this challenge to start the first festival of its kind in Canada.

In the early years, the biggest struggle was convincing people that there were such things as English-speaking films made by Canadians of Asian heritage. There were times that we were even told that our name was misleading, as a film festival with the word “Asian” in it should mean films from Asia. Our response has always been, “We know lots of Vancouverites of Asian heritage that only speak English.” We still continue to battle the stereotype of being “foreigners in their own homeland.”

These last 10 years have had their share of challenges and at times, hopelessness, but what carried us through was the gratitude of the filmmakers for the opportunity to showcase their works and the audience’s appreciation of seeing relatable stories that were not being shown anywhere else. And after all this time, VAFF still relies on an executive team that’s 100% volunteers. We persevered because all those involved had an overriding passion to make a difference in the community and to build cultural understanding beetween Vancouver’s diverse Asian communities themselves, as well as the non-Asian communities.

As I reflect on these last 10 years, I am very proud of how this festival continues to grow and gather momentum. I am grateful for all the sponsors that supported VAFF through the years. As well as all the executives who have volunteered over the last ten years, calling on their friends, pulling all-nighters, and adding their unique contributions.

Finally, in closing, I would like to mention that VAFF has spread its wings and moved into supporting film production for emerging diverse filmmakers. Now with the completion of the incredibly successful 2nd annual Mighty Asian Moviemaking Marathon, I see the next wave of up and coming filmmakers, and I’m confident that VAFF will always have a steady supply of films to program into the future.



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