Asian American Stories of Resilience and Beyond
While Asian Americans have faced a double pandemic of COVID-19 and anti-Asian racism, the rise of solidarity efforts within Asian American and other BIPOC communities gives us moments of joy, resilience, and hope as we rebuild our lives.
ASIAN AMERICAN STORIES OF RESILIENCE AND BEYOND is a series of seven documentary shorts that move beyond the pandemic and reflect the complexities of Asian American experiences in this critical moment.
Silver Winner, 2nd Annual Anthem Awards, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion - Partnership or Collaboration. Nomination, 50th Annual Daytime Emmy® Awards, Short Form Program.
Watch a new short film every Tuesday online, and on the PBS and YouTube apps. And join the social conversation using the hashtag #AsianAmResilience.
Episodes
Season 2022
-
Episode
On All Fronts
In 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes experienced an exponential rise amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the murder of George Floyd sparked a racial reckoning over police violence. A biracial Black-Indonesian family in Minneapolis open up about how they moved through the chaos; each member reveals personal experiences never shared before, and navigate through the difficult issues that have haunted them.
-
Episode
In Living Memory
After the closure of their mother’s nail salon at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, a queer filmmaker works with their mother to recover and articulate the legacy of the salon for their refugee family.
-
Episode
Crossroads
FedEx operates one of its largest hubs in Indianapolis, where over 80% of employees are South Asians/Punjabi. In 2021, a former worker killed eight, leaving the Sikh community grieving. When the investigations declare the mass shooting not a hate crime, many question the findings. The film is the story of a community responding to an act of violence, and their right to be safe and treated equally.
-
Episode
My Chinatown, With Aloha
A fourth-generation Chinese American, filmmaker Kimberlee Bassford explores her family’s relationship to Honolulu's Chinatown. She also examines the parallels between the COVID-19 pandemic and the 1899-1900 bubonic plague in Hawai‘i, highlighting the ways the two public health crises transformed the iconic neighborhood then and now.
-
Episode
Malditas
Two Filipinx cousins grapple with what remains of their dreams, after the loss of one father during the pandemic. Combining interviews, archival and verité, the film explores the tension between losing a parent in a highly Catholic Filipino community, the foreverness of childhood, and the possibilities of growing deeper in faith through grief while in the most conservative county in North Florida.
-
Episode
The Lookout
As a young refugee, Chanthon Bun joined a gang; he was convicted of second-degree robbery at 19 and lost legal protection to live in the U.S. After two decades in prison, Bun was released but not into the custody of ICE by a strange twist of luck. But he knows he must tread carefully as he attempts to legally reintegrate - if ICE were to locate him, he would be detained and slated for deportation.
-
Episode
Recording for Dodie
A Filipino-American daughter digitally records and visually captures the experience of being physically distanced from her sick father, who has been isolated in his nursing facility during the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
