In the 98-year history of the Academy Awards, only one Asian female has ever won the coveted Best Director statuette: Chinese filmmaker Chloé Zhao, who triumphed in 2020 with “Nomadland.” This year, Zhao is back in contention with her film, “Hamnet,” headlining a historic slate of Asian American and Pacific Islander ( directors, cinematographers, actors and animators sweeping Hollywood and beyond.
“[Zhao] reminds me of the fact that for Asian [and] Asian-American directors, actresses, creative producers, you are not constrained or limited to Asian stories,” said Elena Creef, professor of women’s and gender studies at Wellesley College. “I don’t think any of Zhao’s work, going back to her earliest independent films, have been about Asian or diasporic Asian communities. Her focus has always been on those in the margins.”
Creef describes Zhao as a storyteller interested in everything from “poor Native American communities on reservations” to “white van life.” She’s also an outlier in traditional mainstream moviemaking, moving from big-budget IP — her previous film was Marvel’s “Eternals” — to the intimate portrait of William Shakespeare’s family life in “Hamnet.”
Following in this vein is Autumn Durald Arkapaw, a cinematographer of Filipino descent nominated for the Best Cinematography Oscar, who shot Ryan Coogler’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” before rejoining him for 2025’s “Sinners.” While still a big-budget epic, “Sinners” has garnered widespread praise for its original portrayal of African-American and Chinese characters in the Jim Crow South, as well as Arkapaw’s capturing of different skin colors.
She is the first Fillipina-American, and first woman of color, to ever be nominated in her category.
“I have watched ‘Sinners’ multiple times with the sound off, just enjoying the beauty of the work, the beauty of the cinematography with that widescreen camera,” Creef said. “She lights and she films everyone with extreme beauty, no matter skin tone [or] color. It is the most sumptuous visual film, I think, that we’ve seen this past year.”
Also highly lauded throughout this awards season is “KPop Demon Hunters,” nominated for both Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song for “Golden,” sung by the fictional K-pop group, Huntrix. The film, which centers on the trio as they fight demons – both from the underworld and within themselves – with their vocal prowess. But it also showcases the importance of the collective experience, which Jenny Korn, founding director of the Race+Tech+Media Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, said is an essential part of Asian culture.
“[The singers] gain strength from each other, and that does speak to how collective cultures are important,” Korn said. “We think about each other. It’s about all of us rising together. It’s not just about one person. It’s a good message that instead of keeping our fears to ourselves, when we have the ability — the strength — to share them, just trust and know that the people who love us will accept us and will acknowledge that fear.”
Asian and AAPI representation is also present on the small screen, particularly in the Crave-HBO Max breakout romance series, “Heated Rivalry.” While Hudson Williams, who stars as hockey player Shane Hollander, is a Korean-Canadian man playing a Japanese-Canadian character, Korn nevertheless highlighted the show’s portrayal of social themes that largely go undiscussed in Western media.
“This series does a good job of not only showing what it’s like to be an Asian man and be visible in the white-dominated sport of hockey — and to be a closeted Asian man and finally, at the end, to come out to his family — but also, he is an Asian character that has autism,” Korn said.
All of this and more, on this week’s special hour-long Asian and AAPI in media conversation!
Guests
- Jenny Korn, research affiliate and founding director of the Race, Tech, and Media Working Group at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
- Elena Creef, professor of women’s and gender Studies at Wellesley College specializing in Asian American visual history in photography, film and popular culture, and author of “Shadow Traces: Seeing Japanese/American and Ainu Women in Photographic Archives.”
Media discussed in this week’s episode
