Monthly Film Festival

NewFilmmakers Los Angeles (NFMLA) spotlights Asian filmmakers for this year’s InFocus: Asian Cinema, now Powered by Seed&Spark on their virtual festival platform, with a pair of shorts programs featuring work by talented Asian and Asian-American directors, including three world premieres. The day’s programming concludes with polyamorous dramedy First Blush, the feature film debut of director Victor Neumark. Each screening will be followed by live Q&A’s via Zoom.

The day’s programming begins with Shorts Program #1 – Power and Meaning, presented as part of InFocus: Asian Cinema, and offers stories where questions of power and sources of meaning come to the forefront: an artist becoming disillusioned with a meticulous project, an actor who decides to become a cat, a mother caught between her son and her employer, and Eugene Suen’s hilarious story of faith and purpose, Master of Divinity.

In Shorts Program #2 – Who I Am and What I Do, this second selection of shorts highlighting Asian talent behind the camera presented as part of InFocus: Asian Cinema, we encounter stories of characters grappling the role they play in work and in society, featuring stories about actors filmmakers confronting ideas of identity, a high school girl encountering the social mores that threaten the safety of her and her friends, and a teleporting thief on a final action-thriller mission.

The evening concludes with feature film First Blush, in which a young married couple become involved with another woman and the three learn to navigate the complications of a polyamorous relationship. The film is the feature debut of Victor Neumark (associate producer on IFC’s ‘Portlandia’, Comedy Central’s ‘Corporate’, and Hulu’s ‘Shrill’), who describes the story as one that “tenderly explores the anxieties that shape a generation, and celebrates the bravery that it takes to make genuine connections.”

NFMLA showcases films by filmmakers of all backgrounds throughout the year in addition to its special InFocus programming which celebrates diversity, inclusion and region. All filmmakers are welcome and encouraged to submit their projects which will be considered for all upcoming NFMLA Festivals, regardless of the InFocus programming.