San Diego Asian Film Festival represented by 17 countries

The 9th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival (SDAFF) took place in San Diego, CA from October 9-16 and Riverside, CA from October 21-23. The festival, which drew in over 20,000 attendees, featured over 130 short and feature films from a record 17 countries including Canada, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Peru, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and the United States. The SDAFF included an opening night premier of Jessica Yu's Ping Pong Playa. Attending cast members included Jimmy Tsai and Smith Cho (NBC's Knight Rider). The festival also included a “Reel In the Vote” campaign to encourage attendees to register to vote and a Lifetime Achievement Award presentation to actor and humanitarian Soon-Tek Oh, who has acted in American television and film since the 1960s. The festival closed with Yamazaki Takashi's Always 2: Sunset on Third Street, a sequel to a heartwarming post-war Japanese film that swept Japan's version of the Academy Awards. (Above: Lee Ann Kim, Executive Director, SDAFF and Jessica Yu, Director, Ping Ping Playa at the 9th Annual San Diego Asian Film Festival)