"Girlfight", a new film by Karyn Kusama is nothing short of a revelation. In crafting this compelling story of a young Latina teen who turns to boxing for personal catharsis, Kusama emerges as one of the most promising new directors in the independent film world. Forgoing all the flashy cinematic bells and whistles to focus on exceptional scripting, outstanding acting, and a powerful, compelling narrative, "Girlfight" earns every bit of the accolades it earned at Sundance (grand jury prize, best directing).

For Kusama, a graduate of NYU’s elite film school, "Girlfight" marks an auspicious start to what will hopefully be a long and fruitful career. One of the most interesting and impressive angles on the movie is that Kusama is a Japanese/Irish-American hapa who grew up in St. Louis, MO, making a movie about the Latino community in Red Hook, Brooklyn. It’s worth noting that Kusama’s mentor and former boss, director John Sayles ("Lone Star", "Brother From Another Planet") has been a pioneer in crossing ethnic borders to tell good stories and Kusama clearly shares similar abilities.

At least one provocative observation comes out of "Girlfight’s" critical acclaim. The first is that this is the second year in a row that the Sundance Festival has honored the work of an Asian American director with their top, grand jury prize — in 1999, it was Vietnamese American Tony Bui who walked off with the honors for his "Three Seasons." Bui and Kusama’s success, coupled with the commercial achievements of directors like M. Night Shyamalan ("The Sixth Sense"), Ang Lee ("Sense and Sensibility") and Tarsem Singh ("The Cell") marks what appears to be a new era of prominence for APIs in Hollywood after decades of invisibility (save for Wayne Wang).

But this leads to a second, more controversial observation — this rise in talented Asian American filmmakers has not really coincided with a rise in exceptional "Asian American" films per se. The category of "Asian American film" has never been an easy one to define but at least one could try to say that it’s film made for, by and/or about Asian Americans. Yet, why is it that Asian American directors have been able to make rich, brilliant movies about Latina boxers (Kusama), paranormal children (Shyamalan) and the 19th century British gentry (Lee) but no one’s really been able to figure out how to craft an Asian American story just as compelling?

That’s not to say there haven’t been some fine works coming out — Gene Cajayon’s "The Debut" is likely to create quite a following as Chris Chan Lee’s "Yellow" and Justin Lin/Quentin Lee’s "Shopping For Fangs" have. But while these films have been solid artistic works, they don’t come close to the all-around quality generated by Kusama’s debut, most of Lee’s recent work or even the popcorn accessibility of Shyamalan.

I am NOT suggesting that these directors are obligated to make API-centered film — forced "art" is rarely good art (see Red Chinese agit-prop for example). But why, with so much directorial talent in our community, have so few inspired API films emerged? Economics clearly plays a role in this. The African American community has created a vibrant and diverse community of filmmakers because they have the numbers to actually support a film industry, something that the small Asian American community cannot depend on. At the same time, I find it hard to believe that a producer walked up to Kusama, handed her a big check and said, "Latina boxers…yeah, that’s hot, do it." Economics explains the lack of Asian American films in general, but isn’t enough to explain the lack of GOOD API movies.

There’s the other old excuses — lack of good writing (which I think has validity) and lack of good acting (which seems harder to fathom). Any which way, it’s a serious question for the API community to confront ESPECIALLY because there’s so many promising filmmakers emerging from it. I wish I had a more cogent answer to it all, but frankly, I’m baffled by it too. At my most cynical, I’d say that maybe there just aren’t any really good API stories to tell but I know — as should we all — that’s an absurd notion. We have the stories and clearly, we have talent enough to potentially tell them. Maybe "our time" simply hasn’t come yet in the big way it could. But as that most insightful of social thinkers, Bob Marley, once asked, "if not now, then when?"

P.S. I don’t know who else has noticed, but adopted Chinese babies have become a hot new item in advertising. Recent ads by JC Penny and John Hancock Insurance, plus an older Compaq commercial, all feature white couples who complete their families thanks to the adoption of Asian babies. Putting aside the debate over the merits of transracial adoption, what’s disturbing about these ads is how they reduce the challenges faced by these children into a cheap, feel-good spot to promote a company’s image. The message behind all three of these ads is this: "our company supports families and we’re so gosh darn liberal that we even support non-traditional families" such as ones that involve transracial adoptions, even lesbian couples (as was the case in the Hancock ad). It’s liberal humanism meets corporate capitalism at its worst as Chinese children — who likely suffer trauma in both China and the US — find their very personal struggles tokenized to sell brand loyalty to corporations who rarely have demonstrated much of a commitment to the social needs of adopted children.