Fil-Am filmmaker debuts short film, ‘Just a Kid from Seattle,’ at Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival

LAAPFF runs until May 12

It’s that time of the year again — with May as Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month, Visual Communications is back to present the 34th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival from May 3 to 12.

The 10-day festival features films, videos and panels by Asian international and Asian Pacific American artists and filmmakers across select cinemas in the city.

This year’s lineup includes a handful of Filipino and Filipino-American filmmakers. One of them is Jon Jon Augustavo, an award-winning Fil-Am director and filmmaker known for music videos and short films, who is debuting “Just a Kid from Seattle” on Wednesday, May 9 to an LA audience.

“Just a Kid from Seattle” — produced by Sundance and sponsored by Visit Seattle — chronicles 17-year-old Jose (Fil-Am actor Carlin James) as he copes with his mother’s death and finds a new appreciation for his city. It’s a love letter to the city Augustavo grew up in and is loosely based on his own upbringing and culture.

Augustavo was deliberate in having the roughly 20-minute film characterize another side of the city that isn’t commercialized and full of postcard shots. Rather, viewers follow Jose and his friend Quinon (Ryan J. Lewis) as they maneuver around a multicultural neighborhood. For example, they go inside an Asian market where they get Filipino food and a barber shop, and play basketball with area kids.

“The film represents the other part of Seattle that honestly people don’t know exists and the people of color there. In my opinion, people of color don’t exist in Seattle as far as the national consciousness where you see Starbucks, Amazon, ‘Fifty Shades of Grey,’ ‘Frasier,’ and ’Greys Anatomy.’ There is a different cultural part of the city that I think is important to see,” Augustavo told the Asian Journal.

Last fall, Augustavo put out a casting call for a Fil-Am male to play Jose and received nearly 100  submissions from LA, San Francisco, New York and Seattle. He was introduced to James through Dante Basco and was struck by their similarities.

When James read the role of Jose and eventually auditioned, he remarked that “it wasn’t too much of a stretch of who I am and how I grew up.”

“Though I wasn’t too familiar with Seattle, I grew up in a not too nice area of Long Beach, where we’re dealing with the same issues of gentrification and having the heart and spirit of the neighborhood vanishing,” James told the Asian Journal. “The scene with the Asian market, it’s like the ones my parents went to.”

Augustavo, who is Filipino from his mother’s side, has in recent years learned more about this part of his identity. He infuses some of those identifiers in the film as well, through items in Jose’s house or the food he eats.

“The kid is mixed, like me, so he’s not your fully traditional Filipino kid, but he still has a connection to his culture. I threw in the types of foods that he likes, that we all like,” he said. “Little nuances of his Filipino ethnicity, but it’s split because he’s a very American, urban kid. I was trying to balance that.”

Of working with Augustavo, James remarked about the filmmaker’s artistic style.

“Working with Jon Jon was a learning experience— he’s inspiring, passionate and has an amazing eye,” James said. “He’s big on doing one shot scenes which I haven’t done too much of. Basically the camera follows the action all the way through the scene. Me being a perfectionist would beg him to re-shoot some scenes even though he said they were fine.”

The short film was shown during the Sundance Film Festival this past January, where Augustavo received mixed feedback, including from some viewers who were surprised to see how an Asian American male was portrayed.

“Carlin’s part as Jose is a different Asian American male than what we we see. It’s not the first time ever but it’s rarely done. If you meet me, you get it. Jose is very much like me, my brother, and his friends that I grew up. We didn’t grow up seeing that on screen,” Augustavo said. “It’s not just a kid who’s doing math or Spiderman’s sidekick who’s just telling jokes. You want a kid who’s leading. There are people like that but we don’t see that on film or TV. We need to open up that conversation about the types of Asian characters. If people could take that way from my film, that would be great because maybe someone else will write another story like that.”

He hopes to develop “Just a Kid from Seattle” into a longer feature film with more social justice issues from a Fil-Am perspective.

“In the last couple of years, I’ve become more aware of who I am and be more cognizant of why I’m doing something. If it doesn’t add to a conversation or have some merit artistically, I wonder if I should be doing the project. It’s a privileged thing to think, of course, but I think it’s important as a director, especially as a director of color,” he said.

“Just a Kid from Seattle” will be shown on Wednesday night at Regal LA Live before “It’s a Party,” a feature film by Weldon Wong Powers.

There are other Filipino/Fil-Am-made films not to be missed during the festival. On Friday, May 4, “Call Her Ganda,” a documentary by PJ Raval on the murder of trans Filipina woman Jennifer Laude was shown. On Sunday, May 6, “Prison Food” follows Fil-Am chef Johneric Concordia inside some of Asia’s most notorious prisons to see what food they serve, while Alexandra Cuerdo’s “ULAM: Main Dish” highlights Fil-Am chefs in LA and New York and their contributions to the Filipino food movement. On May 9, Mikhail Red’s “NEOMANILA” narrates a Filipino teenage orphan’s recruitment by a death squad.

For more information and complete schedule of films, please visit https://festival.vconline.org/.

Christina M. Oriel

Christina M. Oriel is an award-winning editor and communications strategist based in Los Angeles with experience in content, strategy and branding for media ecosystems, inclusive fintech startups, small businesses and direct-to-consumer products.