The Hopkins Center for the Arts and the Office of Pluralism and Leadership is hosting a film series in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. The program, in its third annual iteration, features seven movies representing regions across Asia and the Pacific Islands.
The film series represents efforts to expand the understanding of what constitutes AAPI identity and culture. By featuring films from East Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, West Asia and Oceania, the organizers aim to include voices within the AAPI community that are often underrepresented in mainstream media, according to senior program manager Johanna Evans.
This year's Dartmouth AAPI programming aims to highlight the heterogeneous nature of the AAPI community while celebrating both traditional stories and evolving cultural identities, according to Anh-Ton Nguyen ’26, co-chair of the AAPI Heritage Month committee.
“We wanted to signify our dual commitment to the AAPI community at Dartmouth as a heterogeneous, hybrid, and multitudinous community on campus,” Nguyen said. “But also as a corpus of diverse stories, experiences, celebrations, and archives or our collective lore.”
The film series has grown since its inception in 2023, with this year featuring the largest selection yet. The collaborative process between the Hopkins Center, OPAL and various student groups has been refined over the years, which is reflected in its collection of compelling and diverse films that align with the series’ emphasis on expansive storytelling.
Evans said that the programming process began in December and that the team had “regular meetings” throughout the Winter term.
Evans noted that the film selection process prioritizes geographic diversity and finding films that vary from what has already been shown in previous years. In particular, they wanted to find films representing West Asia and the Pacific Islands.
One of the films in this year’s series was “No Other Land,” a documentary created by a Palestinian-Israeli collective of filmmakers in Gaza. The series also includes contemporary works like Bong Joon Ho’s new film “Mickey 17” and “The Wedding Banquet,” which was featured at this year’s Sundance Film Festival.
According to Evans, their approach to film selection also balanced popular interest and elevating new work. The program introduced lesser-known films like “Bitter Melon” and “Bazodee,” which were recommended by the OPAL team and student participants.
“I wasn't familiar with [“Bazodee”],” Evans said, “but the OPAL team thought it would be really great to have to celebrate both sides of those cultural celebrations, and blend them together. So some really great, hard to find titles that you wouldn't hear about otherwise, and hopefully a slate that appeals to everyone – a little bit of something from every background.”
A unique component of this year’s series is the Student Showcase, curated by Dartmouth Film Society student leader and Hopkins Center film management fellow Kushal Jayakumar ’26. The showcase features works by five AAPI student filmmakers at Dartmouth and was presented before the screening of “Look Back” — an anime film from Japan — on May 11. In his curation process, Jayakumar drew from his film community on campus.
“I’m a film major myself, and I also helped plan the Hanover Film Festival that recently happened on campus,” Jayakumar said. “I know a lot of filmmakers, and I had already created a database of all the filmmakers and their current projects. I just had to reach out to them, pile in all the projects together and then choose the best ones.”
The Student Showcase aims to provide a platform for AAPI students to present their work to the greater Dartmouth community. Jayakumar emphasized that while not all the student films directly address AAPI themes, the showcase is about highlighting AAPI filmmakers and their stories.
The students whose short films will be screened include Shakeb Arsalan ’26, Natalie Halsey ’25, Tejal Schwartz ’25, Camille Yang ’25 and Andy Park ’26. They range from approximately two to 11 minutes in duration.
This year’s Dartmouth AAPI programming theme is “Folk/Lore,” celebrating both traditional stories and evolving cultural identities, according Nguyen.
The organizers of the AAPI month programming seek to challenge the notion of folklore as merely historical. Nguyen emphasized that folklore is “a living tradition” that continues to evolve. The selected films feature new and notable artists from Asia, highlighting the creation of contemporary folklore alongside traditional narratives.
Despite the success of the series, curators faced challenges in finding films that represented all regions under the AAPI umbrella.
“We aimed to give some kind of justifiable appearance of all the countries that come under this AAPI category,” Jayakumar said. “We pulled it off, but we could not find new projects or upcoming projects that people haven’t seen.”
This year’s film series features the largest selection yet, including a diverse combination of blockbusters, indie dramas, animation, and student short films. Organizers emphasize that they hope the films will have wide appeal and bring the work of filmmakers with AAPI heritage to new audiences. These films will serve as a means of representing the wide range of Asian and Pacific Islander cultural influences at Dartmouth and how the creation of folklore extends into the present.
