In honor of Crazy Rich Asians' watershed moment, here's a compilation of significant films in Asian-American history as collected by Michael Kang (Korean-American director of The Motel) that I've found to be the most comprehensive on the Internet. Here's what he had to say:
"A very subjective list of 101 Asian American films that hold some kind of meaning to me. I define 'Asian American' here loosely. These are films either made by, about, with or concerning Asian Americans.
There are a lot of very good Asian American films missing from the list but I tried to keep the list to the films that made some kind of impact on me (sometimes not a positive one at that)."
His notes are included from the original list from 2012 are included. In addition, here's his list of the top Asian-American narrative feature filmmakers.
Here's a centralized database of all my other lists on Letterboxd.