1. In John Fong’s article “Beyond Finishing The Game: A Look At Asian American Grassroots Outreach,” he argues that there were a lot of challenges for Asian Americans to find the way to make their films to be seen by a lot of people although Asian American films have been successful today. He shows some examples of success of Asian American Films. The effective solution to deal with the struggles for Asian American films is “grassroots marketing”. Asian American filmmakers utilized their own community to market their films by this strategy.
2.As John Fong states, “Via emails from film directors asking for support, campus visit, connections with community-based organization, opening night parties, entire screenings bought out by employee groups, street teams, major on line/social networking pushes and appearances by cast and crew, this labor-intensive approach, while not perfect, has evolved into useful tool”. (4) That is, Asian American filmmakers market their films without relying on the supporting from big budget companies. Instead of it, they focused on Asian American community for the targeted audience. They made labor-intensive approach to market their films in the Asian American community as shown in the example. Therefore, they attract more people to see their films and made profit to continue to play the movies as long as possible.
3. A key term in this article “grassroots marketing”. Big budget companies refused to invest into Asian American Films because they don’t know much about how to market to Asian Americans. Therefore, Asian American filmmakers focused on Asian American community to market their films and get people into the theaters. For example, Lin, director of FINISHING THE GAME “asked cast and crew for their personal time to travel and promote the film, and moving city to city, mobilizing their base audience”. (8) That is, Asian American films have to do labor-intensive approach to the audience. In this way, they utilized their own community to advertise their movies and make money.
4. In “Of Myths and Men: ‘Better Luck Tomorrow’ and the Mainstreaming of Asian America Cinema” by Margaret Hillenbrand, the author discusses the problems of how Asian Americans represented in the American movies by using the example of ‘Better Luck Tomorrow’. Asian Americans often play stereotypical characters in the American movies. They are not represented completely in these films as Asian Americans. Similar to the movies discussed by John Fong, they struggle with challenge to make films as Asian Americans and be accepted in the US.