In John Fong’s article, “Beyond Finishing the Game: A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach” John shows us that how the Asian American cinemas has grown with the changing of market system from 2000 to 2007. In his article, there are devoted Asian American film makers who contributed harder than most of other film makers in Hollywood. Fong states “Hollywood films have marketing budgets that would eclipse the entire production budget of most indies by many times – getting the word out is an expensive thing to do. And most Asian American films are not flush with cash reverses.” (p.3) It is because Asian American film is not that profitable at that time. companies refused to invest in Asian American films. Those film makers had to make own effort to get invested for their local community. They have done something very valuable to their local community. Not only about making Asian American films. They broke the concrete images of Asian and told the message to society.
The good example would be “The Debut” by Gene Cajayon. The history and purpose of making this film is essential. This movie was mainly for Filipino community. Cajayon had to do everything to cast movie stars and also invest his film, so he can continue making more films. He sent lots of email to people, social networking and Campus visiting etc. he and his crew basically done most of things they could do.
The important term from this article is about “grassroots”. This term is about one of process on how the film made and used. This style is showing the film to the local community and targeted people and get invested mostly from local community. However, it is not only for local community. It also has purpose of spreading more influence to more people. It is because once one community get influenced, the process of spreading is already started. It can be trends because of not common and also not following the mainstream versions.
I believe present days’ image of ethnic groups are much better than past few decades. It is because we can see some movies about Asians or other minority groups. For example, recent movie “Crazy Rich Asians”, which is made by Hollywood. A few years ago, I bought a novel called “China Rich Girlfriend” in airport bookstore. It felt little bit astonishing because it was a best seller. But on present days, this novel projected as movie. I did not finish reading that novel, but I want to go see this movie. Like the process of “Grassroots”, if this film become successful, it will have more movie about Asians.