AAPI (Asian American, Pacific Islander) Resources: Documentary Films

This five-part series traces the story of Asian Americans, spanning 150 years of immigration, racial politics, international relations, and cultural innovation. It is a timely, clear-eyed look at the vital role that Asian Americans have played in defining who we are as a nation. Their stories are a celebration of the grit and resilience of a people that reflects the experience of all Americans.
Episode 1: Breaking Ground; Episode 2: A Question of Loyalty; Episode 3: Good Americans; Episode 4: Generation Rising; Episode 5: Breaking THrough.

The Chinese Exclusion Act singled out as never before a specific race and nationality for exclusion, making it illegal for Chinese workers to come to America, and for Chinese nationals already here ever to become citizens of the United States. It is a deeply American story about immigration and national identity, civil rights and human justice; about how we define who can be an American, and what being an American means.

In 1942, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 that cleared the way for the incarceration of Japanese Americans in U.S. confinement camps. Men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry were evicted from the West Coast of the United States and held in sites across the country.

For more than 75 years, the story of Japanese Incarceration has been an untold chapter of American history. This documentary follows the politics of the country as WWII erupted — how American citizens of Japanese descent were affected, what their thoughts were in the face of Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war with Japan, Germany and Italy.

Journalist Lisa Ling explores the massive and economically diverse movement of immigration from China to the United States – and traces her own family roots, to find out what it means to be Chinese in America.

The Slanted Screen examines the portrayal Asian men in film and television, and how new filmmakers are now re-defining age-old stereotypes.

This program examines a major piece of the new American mosaic-a group that is seeking to retain its traditional cultural values while adjusting to life in the U.S. Korean Americans have come into frequent and violent conflict with inner-city African Americans, and have sought, through their own ethnic civic organizations, to overcome the rejection of the community around them.

In the early 1880s, abetted by the Chinese Exclusion Act, a wave of anti-Chinese sentiment swept across America. This program examines the exclusion years through the stories of Chinese Americans and their families who were kept apart by both ancient custom and U.S. law. These immigrants were trapped between countries, at home neither in the U.S. nor in China. The law of the land, which separated these families, also provided relief as Chinese Americans turned to the courts for justice.

Through candid interviews with first- and second-generation Vietnamese-Americans, this program documents the process of assimilation into American culture of refugees from the former Republic of Vietnam.

What does it mean to become American? What is lost and what is gained in the process? In interviews with historians, descendants, and recent immigrants, this set of powerful Bill Moyers documentaries explores these questions through the dramatic experience of the Chinese in America. Includes Gold Mountain Dreams, Between Two Worlds, and No Turning Back.

Pacific Islanders serve in the U.S. military in disproportionally high numbers and have suffered the highest casualty rates in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The men and women of Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific, are American citizens and serve in our country’s military at a rate three times higher than the rest of the country. Learn why the island’s returning veterans say they can’t get the healthcare they need. Distributed by PBS Distribution.

Program celebrates President Carter's bill proclaiming May 4 - May 10 Asian Pacific Heritage Week in honor of the cultural traditions of Asian Americans.

As a multi‐ethnic American of Filipino heritage, Patrick uses a cine‐ethnographic approach to discover what it is to be an American Filipino.

A laugh-out-loud real-life romantic comedy about Ravi Patel, an almost-30-year-old Indian American who enters a love triangle between the woman of his dreams and...his parents.

In 1975, with the end of the war in Vietnam imminent, Mai Thi Kim, a poor, young Vietnamese woman, sent her seven-year-old daughter to America as part of a controversial evacuation program known as Operation Babylift. Kim believed her daughter Hiep -- who was conceived during a brief love affair with an American Naval officer -- would be in danger in Vietnam. Hiep's journey took her to Pulaski, Tennessee, where she was adopted by a single woman and renamed Heidi, and became "101%" American. In 1997, Heidi decides to return to Vietnam in search of her mother. The film follows mother and daughter over the course of their one-week reunion, and in painful, difficult scenes, it becomes apparent that the cultural gulf between them is much larger than either imagined. It reveals how the trauma inflicted by the Vietnam War continues to haunt and harm those who survived it.