Locals shine at San Diego Asian Film Festival

Local filmmaker Emory Chao Johnson’s history with the San Diego Asian Film Festival began a decade ago when he was a student in the Reel Voices film internship program run by Pacific Arts Movement, which presents the festival each year.

“It was the Reel Voices program that allowed me to first have access to other filmmakers and to technology,” Johnson recalled, “and we got to interface with our instructors. They had a film library and we were allowed to borrow DVDs to check out and watch.”

Johnson was inspired by one in particular: “Who Killed Vincent Chin?,” a 1987 documentary by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Pena about the murder of a young Chinese engineer. Johnson calls it “a major influence.”

A short documentary by Johnson, “To Write From Memory,” is among the diverse lineup of films at this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival, which opens Nov. 2. Their film will screen Nov. 4 at 2:55 p.m. at Regal Edwards Mira Mesa as part of the festival’s “Close Contact” shorts program.

That venue is the festival’s primary screening location, but other screenings and events will be held at the Museum of Photographic Arts and the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park, and at the UC San Diego Price Center Theater and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, both in La Jolla.

Johnson grew up in San Diego and attended Torrey Pines High School. “I became curious about the act of creating film,” they said. “Prior to that I’d only considered being involved in film criticism.”

They would go on to earn an MFA in film and television at UCLA. Johnson is now based in Los Angeles.

“To Write from Memory,” they said, “is a work that taps into the trans experience and how we experience time, our gender identity and expression. The atmosphere is saturated in feelings and emotions that are rooted in that experience.

“You see this character going through everyday motions of life. There are certain sounds, certain gestures that might trigger a deeper well of experiences.”

“To Write from Memory” had its world premiere earlier this year at the Berlin International Film Festival, or Berlinale. It’ a 19-minute-long work that Johnson considers an autobiographical, performative documentary.

Johnson is one of five San Diego-born or -raised filmmakers with works in this year’s festival, the others being Zeinabu irene Davis (“Pandemic Bread”), Kayla Abuda Galang (“When You Left Me on That Boulevard”), Joseph Mangat (“Divine Factory”) and Nathan Xia (“Adam’s Song”).

Twenty-three films overall are making a premiere of some kind at the festival, five of them world premieres.

Along with all the new films is a “Classics Restored” category of screenings that includes the 30-year anniversary of Chen Kaige’s historical drama “Farewell My Concubine.” Starring the legendary Leslie Cheung, it was the first Chinese-language film to win the coveted Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival and also earned two Academy Award nominations.

The film is being shown theatrically in an uncut version for the first time in the U.S.

For a list of all the festival’s films and a screening schedule, go to sdaff.org/2023/schedule.

Coddon is a freelance writer.