Asian American Film Festivals: Frames, Locations, and Performances of Memory (Issn, 28)

Responding to a lack of studies on the film festival's role in the production of cultural memory, this book explores different parameters through which film festivals shape our reception and memories of films. By focusing on two Asian American film festivals, this book analyzes the frames of memory that festivals create for their films, constructed through and circulated by the various festival media. It further establishes that festival locations--both cities and screening venues--play a significant role in shaping our experience of films. Finally, it shows that festivals produce performances which help guide audiences towards certain readings and direct the film's role as a memory object. Bringing together film festival studies and memory studies, 'Asian American Film Festivals' offers a mixed-methods approach with which to explore the film festival phenomenon, thus shedding light on the complex dynamics of frames, locations, and performances shaping the festival's memory practices. It also draws attention to the understudied genre of Asian American film festivals, showing how these festivals actively engage in constructing and performing a minority group's collective identity and memory This interdisciplinary series addresses the relation between media and cultural memory. Its publications study how media construct, store, and disseminate memory. The series' focus is on different media and technologies, such as text and image, the cinema and the new digital media, on transmediality, intermediality, and remediation, as well as on the social (and increasingly transnational and transcultural) contexts of mediated memory. The aim of the series is to provide a vibrant international platform for research and scholarly exchange in the field of media and memory studies. Manuscripts s Acknowledgements Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Abbreviations 1 Introduction: Why Asian America, Film Festivals, and Memory? 2 Memory in Asian American Cinema 3 The Film Festival as Memory Network 4 Framing Memory: Festival Narratives 5 The Mise-en-Scène of Memory: Film Festivals’ Curation of Space 6 Performing Memory: Film Festival Actors and Communities 7 Conclusion: The Present and Future of Asian American Film Festivals 8 Appendix Bibliography Filmography Index of Terms Index of Film Festivals Index of Locations Index of Organizations