20th APAFF Closing Statement
It is both remarkable and bewildering that the month of May went by so fast! Despite the fact that very few people were able to venture outside of their homes during the pandemic, we hope that the films we offered online for everyone to view for the whole month helped to make your “shelter in place” more tolerable and enjoyable.
In previous years when our festivals were held in traditional theater settings, we were at best able to accommodate a few hundred filmgoers over the few days of each festival. But this year, over the period of 31 days of the festival, we had a final count of over 22,000 unique individual online viewers from all over the world, hitting almost 58,000 movie pages to watch our amazing films.
Just because the 2020 Festival is over, does not mean that you can no longer see any of the films we listed. We have retained a number of films that were originally posted by their filmmakers on public access platforms like YouTube you can still see these films through our web pages until we next update our website.
For us, having this many viewers worldwide get to know the works of our APA filmmakers has made the hard work of switching to the online format all worth it. What’s more, with Zoom, we were able to conduct “live chats” with filmmakers and actors to discuss their filmmaking methodology and careers. These live events were well attended and participants were able to ask questions making these chats a more interesting experience for all.
If it wasn’t for our funders and Community Partners we would not have been able to cover all the expenses related to the intensive amount of work that needed to be done. I want to thank The Rose Group, the Organization of Chinese Americans, Greater DC Chapter, the Association of Vietnamese Americans, the DC Chinese American Museum, DC Chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League, HanMi FM 102.9, Fiesta Asia, DC Shorts, Eaton Workshop, the National Museum of Asian Art, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Mayor’s Office on Asian Pacific Islander Affairs for their generous support for the festival.
I would be remiss if I do not credit the success of our 20th Anniversary Festival to our excellent team from Board members to volunteers. From film selection, to program planning, to outreach, our small but nimble team did everything within the very tight timeline. I especially want to acknowledge our webmaster for her hard work, day and night, making everything just perfect!
Even though the festival is over, it is our intention to conduct events throughout the coming year. As the pandemic pushed back the 2020 US Census deadline, we will continue to be involved and urge everyone to do our civic duty.
Until we see you again in the near future, on behalf of the APA Film Festival, I wish you and your loved ones to be safe and healthy!
Yours sincerely,
David Yao, Festival Director
