No 'limitasians' stopping 23rd annual Vancouver Asian Film Festival
Credit to Author: Stephanie Ip| Date: Thu, 03 Oct 2019 00:06:51 +0000
The Vancouver Asian Film Festival officially kicked off its countdown to the 23rd annual event with the support of a Power Ranger and a DC superhero.
Chinese-Canadian actors Ludi Lin and Osric Chau, both based out of Vancouver, were on hand Wednesday to help stir up excitement for this year’s festival, taking place Nov. 7 to 10 at the Cineplex Odeon International Village Cinemas in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
VANCOUVER, B.C. From left to right: Barbara Lee (VAFF founder), Lynne Lee (VAFF festival director), actors Ludi Lin and Osric Chau pose for a photo during a press conference for the Vancouver Asian Film Festival on Oct. 2, 2019 in Vancouver, B.C.
The theme of this year is “No Limitasians,” a call to celebrate performers of Asian heritage, to challenge boundaries and expectations, and to create opportunities without waiting for Hollywood to come calling.
“Asian representation has made more progress in the last two years than all the 20 years prior – but it took a lot of work over the last 20 years to build the momentum to finally make the shift in attitude and perspective,” said festival founder Barbara Lee, citing 2018’s runaway box office success of Crazy Rich Asians and the recent casting of Simu Li as Marvel’s first Asian superhero Shang-Chi.
Ludi Lin.
This year’s opening night film is In A New York Minute, starring Lin. He appeared in the 2017 big-screen reboot of Power Rangers and most recently in Aquaman as Murk.
Most recently, it was announced Lin would star as Liu Kang in the upcoming Mortal Kombat reboot.
“Hollywood has finally walked out of the woods and realized that there’s more to the world than Hollywood,” said Lin, citing the large populations of Asian audiences around the world.
“Because now films have to work not only in America, not only in Hollywood, not only in Western countries – they have to work internationally.”
Osric Chau.
VAFF’s Centrepiece Spotlight film selection this year is Empty by Design, produced by and starring the Vancouver-born Chau. Just last week, it was announced Chau would join the Arrowverse Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover event as Ryan Choi, a physics professor who suits up as DC hero Atom.
“What I’m more excited about is the fact that Ryan Choi can open it up for more Asian representation in the whole Arrowverse,” said Chau. “I’m happy to be part of that change.”
Chau’s film Empty by Design is his first production credit and was born out of the realization that he could have a hand in pushing representation forward, instead of waiting for Asian roles to come around.
“I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I’ve got to do something,” he said. “So I just had this fire under me, I started recruiting my friends, let’s do our own thing … and we made this movie.”
In recent years, calls for representation on screen have been widespread in Hollywood, from the #OscarsSoWhite campaign in 2016, to Crazy Rich Asians’ release in 2018, the first Hollywood-backed, modern-day film to feature an all-Asian cast since 1993.
For more information or to view the festival lineup, visit vaff.org.
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Actor Osric Chau is pictured in this still from Empty by Design (2019).