About the Non-profit

The San Diego Asian Film Foundation (SDAFF) is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the community about the rich diversity of the Asian Pacific Islander culture through films and videos. The premiere event of the SDAFF is its annual film festival in October. One of our goals is to build stronger ties with area schools to foster discussion and education about Asian Cinema. The SDAFF offers student internships, cultural literacy programs with area high schools and colleges, and a nurturing environment for artists in San Diego. Throughout the year, we hold special events such as our Korean Cinema Showcase and Performers Showcase that highlight Asian and Asian American cultures and talents.

Most notable achievements

Today SDAFF not only hosts its premiere film festival, but actively engages in promoting the media arts of Asian Pacific Islanders through several of its programs. The most noteworthy is "Reel Voices," an educational outreach program that teaches local high school students the basic principles of filmmaking. These students are then asked to make a 10-minute short documentary of their choice that ties back to APIA issues. Their final work is featured in a shorts program at the annual film festival. SDAFF also offers other opportunities for local high school and university students through internship programs and scholarship opportunities such at its annual film review competition. High school students are asked to write a film review about any of the programs shown at the festival and the winning writer is rewarded with a college scholarship and their article is published in the San Diego Union Tribune.

What's the niche?

The unique feature of SDAFF is embedded in our motto, "Celebrate Cinema in the Sun."It is this celebratory persona that defines the nature of our film festival. We feel that film festivals have their own unique personality, and their location often plays a big role in developing their mission and agenda. For example, other Asian Film Festivals grew from cities with strong Asian-American activism such as New York, LA, and San Francisco, and their history has often shaped activist empowerment agendas. Asian-American history and activism is still growing in San Diego, and we take pride in celebrating Asian cinema in our beautiful city.

What's the biggest challenge?

Keeping the momentum of the film festival going and recruiting motivated staff with high morale can be a challenge, but we manage to succeed at this by having a healthy and flexible organizational culture. If anything, the biggest challenge we face is competing with several other non-profits over a small pool of sponsorship and grant money.

What's in store for the future

SDAFF really looks up to the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, as an older sister festival. SFIAAF is a huge powerhouse with strong reach and voice for API filmmakers. We hope to achieve the same status as SFIAAF by being able to sponsor worthy film projects, and work in conjunction with local public networks such as KPBS to provide programming and content. At the rate that we're growing and the efforts from our dedicated staff, we see this goal being accomplished soon.

Who would you like to be contacted by?

They key component to SDAFF's success is collaboration, and we seek to work with companies, groups, or individuals that take an interest in the media arts and our mission of promoting cultural literacy of the APIA community.

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