Skip to main content
Vilcek Foundation
  • About
    • About

      The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation of the arts and sciences.

    • Our Mission
    • Our Founders
    • Our Team
    • Press Center
    • Contact
  • Prizes
    • Prizes

      The Vilcek Foundation Prizes celebrate extraordinary achievements in the arts and sciences.

    • About the Prizes
    • Prize Recipients
    • Vilcek Prizes

      Awards immigrants with a legacy of major accomplishments.

    • Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise

      Recognizes young immigrant professionals for outstanding achievements.

    • Vilcek Prize for Excellence

      Celebrating intellectual and cultural leaders in the United States.

    • Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History

      Honors art historians, curators, and fine arts professionals.

  • Art
  • Grants
    • Grants

      Grants awarded to 501(c)(3) cultural, educational, and philanthropic organizations in the United States.

    • Grants

      Learn more and apply for a grant.

    • Grants History

      Explore a list of past Vilcek Foundation grantees.

  • Events
  • News
Sign Up Search
Home > News > New American Perspectives in Filmmaking at HIFF 2023

New American Perspectives in Filmmaking at HIFF 2023

News | September 20, 2023
Tags
director film filmmaker hiff new american perspectives screenwriter
Download audio
Audio: Listen to this post
Share this page
Share this page on X Share this page on Facebook Share this page on LinkedIn
A colorful graphic with "HIFF" on the top of a wave and Godzilla, a helicopter, and King Kong heading towards the wave.

The Vilcek Foundation is proud to present the New American Perspectives program at the 43rd Annual Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF) in Honolulu this October. New American Perspectives shines a spotlight on the valuable perspective that immigrant, foreign-born and first-generation American filmmakers bring to contemporary cinema in the United States. The program, presented in partnership with HIFF, includes a master class, filmmaker discussions and panels, film screenings and classroom presentations in local schools.

New American Perspectives is underwritten by a grant from the Vilcek Foundation to HIFF to bring immigrant and first-generation American filmmakers and their work to the festival.

Films and Filmmakers

At the 2023 festival this October, we are delighted to share new work by and programs with:

  • Geoff McFetridge (b. Canada, of Chinese and Canadian descent)
  • Sing J. Lee (b. United Kingdom, of Hong Kong descent)
  • Nickzad Nodjoumi (b. Iran)
  • Sara Nodjoumi (b. United States to Iranian parents)
  • Till Schauder (b. United States to German parents)
  • Chiaki Yanagimoto (b. Japan)
  • Denise Zmekhol (b. Brazil)

In the coming weeks, we will publish individual profiles on each of our featured New American Perspectives filmmakers and their films. The full schedule of HIFF 2023 programs is available at HIFF.org. 

A still of Geoff McFetridge in a paint-splattered apron seated in front of three of his artworks.
Courtesy of Geoff McFetridge

Geoff McFetridge: Drawing a Life

Geoff McFetridge (b. Canada, of Chinese and Canadian descent), artist and subject

Artist and designer Geoff McFetridge found drawing as an outlet early in life, using the steadiness of the pencil and the simplicity of line to tame his mind and make sense of the world around him. After attending CalArts, he expanded into printmaking and graphic design, working with indie magazines and filmmakers Spike Jonze and Sofia Coppola while finding and establishing his voice as an artist. His work is now ubiquitous, with his bold graphic style embraced by companies from Apple to Warby Parker. Directed by Dan Covert and executive produced by Spike Jonze, Drawing a Life explores the artist’s life and process—from inspiration to actualization. 

A still with two men standing at the front of an old gold car.
Courtesy of Sing J. Lee

The Accidental Getaway Driver

Sing J. Lee (b. United Kingdom, of Hong Kong descent), director and screenwriter

The Accidental Getaway Driver is director Sing J. Lee’s first feature film. This dramatic narrative, based on a true story, showcases Lee’s talent for subtle and layered emotional storytelling. The Accidental Getaway Driver follows Vietnamese American taxicab driver Long Ma as he picks up and is subsequently held hostage by three recent escapees from an Orange County, California, jail. The film deftly explores Ma’s and his captors’ isolation, and the aspects of identity, belonging, and fear that can bring people together and drive them apart. The film had its U.S. premiere at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, where Lee received the Directing Award for U.S. Dramatic Feature.

An old reel of film with a man posing with his hands covering his face.
Courtesy of Sara Nodjoumi/Till Schauder

A Revolution on Canvas

Nickzad Nodjoumi (b. Iran), artist, subject

Sara Nodjoumi (b. United States to Iranian parents), director

Till Schauder (b. United States to German parents), director

Artist Nickzad (Nicky) Nodjoumi is known for his powerful and often provocative paintings over the past 50 years that address politics, history, power and corruption. Directed by Sara Nodjoumi and Till Schauder, A Revolution on Canvas explores two narratives concurrently. On the surface, it is an inquiry into the whereabouts of a series of Nodjoumi’s paintings exhibited at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art that compelled his exile from Iran; on a deeper level, it is an exploration of how Nodjoumi’s art and activism have impacted his relationships with his family—particularly his daughter, co-director Sara Nodjoumi, and his longtime wife and creative soulmate Nahid Hagigat, a trailblazing and celebrated artist in her own right. During the search, Sara, drawing on disarmingly frank conversations with both her father and mother, traces a timeline of events to understand the circumstances that led to her family’s personal history echoing the treacherous path of many immigrant families caught in the crossfire of politics and life.

A Revolution on Canvas nimbly explores the multiplicity of powerful art: how it can outwardly serve as a tool for resistance and protest while providing the artist with an outlet for healing trauma.

A still of a group of people all dressed in pink garments engaging in symbolic, uniform movement.
Courtesy of Chiaki Yanagimoto

AUM: The Cult at the End of the World

Chiaki Yanagimoto (b. Japan), producer and director 

AUM: The Cult at The End of the World marks experienced producer and distributor Chiaki Yanagimoto’s directorial debut. Yanagimoto and her co-director Ben Braun’s directorial choices set this documentary about Aum Shinrikyo apart from other films that explore cults and coercive organizations. AUM: The Cult at The End of the World focuses on the activities that should have raised alarms as the organization grew, and how the sensationalization and romanticization of the cult by Japanese media enabled Aum’s more sinister actions to go overlooked. Through archival news footage and thoughtful interviews, the directors tell a cautionary tale of how easily a dangerous group can grow to power.

In addition to her work on Aum, Yanagimoto will be at HIFF to present filmmakers whose films enjoyed international release from her company’s new distribution arm, SAKKA.  Based in Los Angeles, she founded SAKKA to bring Japanese independent films and contemporary Japanese cinema to wider audiences around the globe.

A still of a man and a woman standing in front of floor-to-ceiling windows with broken glass next to them.
Courtesy of Denise Zmekhol

Skin of Glass

Denise Zmekhol (b. Brazil), director

Skin of Glass reckons with the director’s relationship to her father, architect Roger Zmekhol, and the political and economic history of Brazil through the lens of her father’s masterwork, the Pele de Vidro (“Skin of Glass”) building in downtown São Paulo. Designed in 1960, the building exemplified the optimism of the country’s young democracy: Brazil’s economy was thriving, enabling artistry and innovation to similarly thrive. Following the coup of 1964, the building’s history reflects much of Brazil’s own history: from glory days, to dictatorship, to a reinvention as democracy was once again established in 1985. In 2013, the Pele de Vidro became the site of a housing occupation, serving as a home for hundreds of Brazilian citizens in need of shelter. As Zmekhol explores the past and present of the building and its relationship to São Paulo, she reckons with loss, longing and the concept of home: a powerful lens that illuminates the processes of grief and transformation.

Tags
director film filmmaker hiff new american perspectives screenwriter
Share this page
Share this page on X Share this page on Facebook Share this page on LinkedIn

Related News

October 1, 2024

Documentary Filmmaker Ramona Diaz Speaks Truth to Power

Ramona Diaz’s documentary "And So It Begins" delves into the rise of autocracy in the Philippines amidst the 2022 presidential election, with a focus on democracy, truth, and women’s empowerment.
Former Vice President of the Philippines Leni Robredo wears a pink polo shirt embroidered with the flag of the Philippines. She stands on a stage amid a joyous crowd being showered with pink confetti during a rally during her run for President of the Philippines in 2022.
September 30, 2024

Van Tran Nguyen’s “The Motherload” skewers the absurdity of war films

Van Tran Nguyen’s debut feature film uses humor and satire to deconstruct and deflate the impact of Hollywood films about the American war in Vietnam.
Film poster for
September 25, 2024

New American Perspectives at HIFF 44

The Vilcek Foundation hosts a cohort of immigrant filmmakers and centers their work at the Hawai’i International Film Festival.
Program title graphic:

You may also be interested in

Panel Discussion, September 30, 2020

Lingua Franca: Immigrant Experiences and Representation

A panel discussion with filmmaker Isabel Sandoval, moderated by Ricardo Aca, with Rose Cuison-Villazor, Allegra Love, and Jhett Tolentino.
A film still of Olivia, a Filipina trans woman, looking off-screen while sitting by a coffee table.

Miko Revereza

Miko Revereza receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for the ingenuity and urgency with which he bridges the personal and the political, in works that challenge us to rethink aspects of both documentary filmmaking and the immigrant experience.
Portrait of Miko Revereza

Nanfu Wang

Nanfu Wang receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking for the impact and courage of her riveting documentaries, which are lucid and unflinching in confronting the consequences of systemic oppression and corruption in China.
Portrait of Nanfu Wang

Join our mailing list

Sign Up
Vilcek Foundation
21 East 70th Street
New York, New York 10021

Phone: 212.472.2500

Email: info@vilcek.org

  • About
    • Our Mission
    • Our Founders
    • Our Team
    • Press Center
    • Contact
  • Prizes
    • Prize Recipients
    • Vilcek Prizes
    • Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise
    • Vilcek Prize for Excellence
    • Marica Vilcek Prize in Art History
  • Art
  • Grants
    • Grants History
  • Events
  • News
  • Careers
Connect with us
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Facebook
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Instagram
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on X
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on LinkedIn
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Youtube
  • Connect with the Vilcek Foundation on Vimeo
  • Privacy Policy
  • Accessibility Statement
© 2025   Vilcek Foundation
We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok