A 92-Year-Old Nightclub Dancer Gets Back on Stage at Boston's Asian American Film Festival
The Boston Asian American Film Festival runs from 15 to 25 October, with Chinatown Cha-Cha, the animated In Waves and an animation shorts block worth booking.
Coby Yee is 92 and used to dance in nightclubs, and she's decided to get back on stage. Chinatown Cha-Cha, Luka Yuanyuan Yang's documentary about her joining the senior dance troupe Grant Avenue Follies for one last tour, plays the Boston Asian American Film Festival on Sunday 18 October at 3:30pm. The tour takes the troupe to Chinese communities in the US, Cuba and China.
BAAFF runs from 15 to 25 October 2026 at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline and the Emerson Paramount Center in Boston. It bills itself as New England's largest Asian American film festival, and it's co-produced by the Asian American Resource Workshop and ArtsEmerson. Opening night is Thomas Percy Kim's Isle Child, about a Korean-American adoptee who finds a hidden letter saying his birth mother is terminally ill in Korea. Xiaodan He's Montreal, My Beautiful closes the festival on 25 October. Both are sold out.
There's still plenty to see. In Waves is Phuong Mai Nguyen's animated film of AJ Dungo's 2019 graphic novel. Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu voice a reserved high schooler who draws and skates and the surfer who teaches him to surf. It screens on 25 October at 1pm. The centrepiece documentary on 24 October is Y Vân: The Lost Sounds of Saigon, co-directed by Khoa Ha and Victor Velle, which follows Khoa as she tries to uncover and preserve the lost music of her grandfather, the composer Y Vân.
The animation shorts block, Drawing Lines (18 October, 6:30pm), is the one I'd queue for. It includes Glenna Burner's Yokaitopia, where a boy crosses into the world of yokai, and Cami Kwan's Paper Daughter. That one follows Joy, who arrives at Angel Island from China under a false identity as a "paper daughter" and makes a paper mask in the likeness of Mae, the dead girl she's posing as.
Feature and shorts tickets are $15, and a festival pass is $150. ArtsEmerson also sells a $54 pass for all four shorts blocks. Most screenings are followed by a Q&A, some in person and some over Zoom. A special presentation of Shawn Shao-Wen Chou's Tiger Mom Academy follows on 14 November, with tickets on sale from 16 October.
