ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author traces a shift from the race-conscious discourses of Asian American filmmaking, which are contemptuous of the mainstream, to an assimilationist discourse that de-emphasizes race and prioritizes conversations about financial success and interfacing with Hollywood. She presents a history of Asian American cinema through focusing in particular on the feature-length film—a format that rejuvenated Asian American cinema in the second half of the 1990s, and that would come to dominate the conversation about its national impact and future directions. The author contextualizes the rise of the feature film in Asian American film festivals by describing the impact of the so-called "Class of 1997", when an unprecedented number of features made a splash on the festival circuit. Thus, the idea that feature films are the "coin of the realm" of Asian American cinema can be extended to the film festival circuit too: the promotion of feature films is now what gives these festivals their value.
