We Keep Us Together: Collective Memory, Cultural Work, and Community Power at SAAFF 2025

Seattle, WA — At the 2025 Seattle Asian American Film Festival, five powerful films honor how communities survive, adapt, and pass down legacy—through movement, ritual, music, and care. In The Golden 50: A Mak Fai Anniversary, Han Edward So Eckelberg captures a lion dance troupe’s half-century legacy in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. Pader Xiong’s Home-land: Hmong American Women uplifts the leadership of Hmong women through art, advocacy, and tradition. In Preah Kanloung, Chanthadeth Chanthalangsy reflects on faith and family through his grandmother’s spiritual leadership at a Khmer temple in South Seattle. Saigon to Seattle, created with Friends of Little Saigon, gathers oral histories from Vietnamese elders and community leaders. And in Reach Out, John Zafra-Haas follows a cross-generational music collaboration that links climate justice to Filipino resistance.

These stories stretch across geographies and generations, but they all return to one central truth: we don’t move through the world alone. Whether capturing lion dances, temple rituals, kitchen conversations, or intergenerational solidarity, these films are not just stories of community—they are acts of it.

Inheritance in Motion

The power of cultural practice pulses throughout each film—not as tradition frozen in time, but as something actively lived, shared, and remade. In The Golden 50: A Mak Fai Anniversary, director Han Edward So Eckelberg chronicles the half-century legacy of a Seattle lion dance troupe. “The Golden 50 demonstrates how lion dancing is not an old, stagnant, folk dance tradition, but rather a living, dynamic, and growing culture,” he writes. “It challenges the idea of lion dancing as only a hobby… instead of a lifestyle.”

Pader Xiong, director of Home-land: Hmong American Women, echoes this view through a different cultural lens: “The film reflects and celebrates Hmong women's proven capabilities, strengths, and experiences from the past 50 years in America.” From vibrant textiles to movement building, Xiong's film offers a view of Hmong identity as both deeply rooted and ever evolving.

So much of this work begins at home. “I enjoyed filming the Hmong traditional clothing as I got to share my culture with my friend who helped film, and I got to capture intimate imagery of getting dressed by my Mom,” Xiong adds. Eckelberg, too, recalls a scene from The Golden 50 where Royal, his Sifu, overlooks the Seattle skyline with Mak Sigung: “Some compare it to the Lion King scene between Mufasa and Simba. I personally think it's a funny interaction… but I am glad we had that moment together captured.”

The Golden 50: A Mak Fai Anniversary

Spiritual and Political Lineage

At the heart of Preah Kanloung, filmmaker Chanthadeth Chanthalangsy centers his grandmother, a devout Theravada Buddhist, and the temple that anchors the Khmer American community in South Seattle. “What inspired me to make this film was my Khmer culture and wanting to showcase it through the lens of my grandmother,” he writes. “Not only am I sharing about the Khmer community and my grandma, I'm sharing a part of myself as well.”

These gestures of remembrance are not just personal—they’re political. In Saigon to Seattle, the filmmakers honor the Vietnamese refugee legacy and reflect on the leadership of women and elders: “I think often, we see Asian women as submissive or invisible, but as this film shows, it is the leadership of the mothers, aunties, and sisters that worked diligently for their fight for survival.”

Yet the process also required honesty about the contradictions within community spaces. “We could see from our angle that there was an ambulance sitting there with three EMTs waiting for folks in crisis,” the filmmaker reflects, describing a moment during a shoot at Hau Hau Market. “We understand that a lot of Vietnamese small business owners and unhoused folks didn't want to be on camera… Sitting in the complications of what we can do, what we want, and what we need to unpack as a community… it's real.”

Art as Uplift, Art as Solidarity

In Reach Out, director John Zafra-Haas follows Bootleg Orchestra and Roger Rigor as they collaborate on a climate justice anthem rooted in Filipino resistance. “It is a privilege for me as a cultural worker… to produce material that uplifts those whose voices are often ignored,” he writes. “I hope this film inspires other artists to root themselves in their communities and work side by side with our working class community members who face exploitation.”

The film challenges audiences to look past “greenwashed” narratives of progress. “The devastation… is not just from the super typhoons that hit the Philippines every year,” Zafra-Haas notes. “But also caused by the resource extraction in the countryside for rare earth minerals like nickel, which are necessary for electric ‘green’ vehicles… Who is actually paying the price?”

But the film is not only about critique—it’s about connection. “I was anxious leading up to meeting Roger… but I could have never predicted that I'd walk away from this project gaining a mentor and dear friend who I'll continue collaborating with and receiving inspiration from.”

A Living Archive

From Buddhist temples to rehearsal studios, these five films remind us that cultural memory isn’t static—it’s in our gestures, our food, our music, our clothing, our bodies. As Chanthalangsy puts it, “Meeting other fellow Cambodian Americans holds a special meaning for me. There are not a lot of us in the United States. So when Khmer New Years rolls around, I'm happy to be in community with people who share my ethnicity.”

This is legacy not as monument, but as movement. As the Saigon to Seattle team reflects: “We have to be reflective of the work our ancestors did to find their place in the world… Now is a time to challenge fear.”

In every frame of these films, we’re reminded that community is not just a backdrop—it’s the central character. We are shaped by the people who show up, pass it down, and build something lasting.

“I hope people walk away with a sense of pride and even a call-to-action to start learning something new,” writes Eckelberg, “or filming their own video that gives thanks to their own cultural practices.”

Saigon To Seattle: 50 Years After The War