Asian American and Pacific Islander Artists: Movies

Peter Chung is a Korean American animator.

Peter Shin is an American animator, director, and producer of Korean descent. He directed several episodes of Family Guy.

Hibakusha is directed by Vietnamese American filmmaker Steve Nguyen and animated by Filipino American SVA alum Choz Belen (BFA 2006 Computer Art).

Jennifer Yuh is a Korean American storyboard artist and film director. She is the director of Kung Fu Panda 2, Kung Fu Panda 3, and directed the opening of Kung Fu Panda.

Iwao Takamoto was an American animator, television producer, and film director of Japanese descent. He began his career as a production and character designer for Walt Disney Animation Studios before moving to Hanna-Barbera Productions, where he designed a great majority of the characters, including Scooby-Doo and Astro, and eventually became a director and producer.

Daniel Chong is an American animator and director of Singaporean Chinese descent.

Jimmy T. Murakami was a Japanese American animator and director.

Eighty-year-old Jimmy Mirikitani survived the trauma of WWII internment camps, Hiroshima, and homelessness by creating art. But when 9/11 threatens his life on the New York City streets and a local filmmaker brings him to her home, the two embark on a journey to confront Jimmy's painful past. An intimate exploration of the lingering wounds of war and the healing powers of community and art.

A documentary about unknown, self-taught 81-year-old artist Frank Wong who has spent the past four decades recreating his fading memories by building romantic, extraordinarily detailed miniature models of the San Francisco Chinatown rooms of his youth. This film takes the journey of one individual and maps it to a rapidly changing urban neighborhood from 1940s to present day.

This Academy Award winner reveals the contentious origins of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and tells the inspiring story of its creator, a 21-year-old Chinese American Yale architecture student. Beating out some of the most prestigious architecture films from around the world, Lin's plan was selected from over 1,000 different designs, a giant victory for such a young and unknown artist.

Kitty Tsui recounts her emergence as a poet, artist, activist, writer, and bodybuilder in the early days of the Women's Liberation Movement in San Francisco. She narrates her experience of arriving to the States as an immigrant from Hong Kong by way of her own original poetry and stories. Tsui wrote the groundbreaking Words of a Woman Who Breathes Fire, the first book written by an Asian American lesbian. She is considered by many to be one of the foremothers of the API, Asian Pacific Islander, lesbian feminist movement.

A biopic about the life and work of pioneering Chinese American artist, Tyrus Wong, who would overcome a life of poverty, racism, and discrimination to become a renowned painter and Hollywood sketch artist. Tyrus's eastern influenced paintings caught the eye of Walt Disney and became the inspiration for the classic animated feature Bambi.