APATure 2026
Curated by Lisa Jarrett, Aaron Oculto, Jocelyn Ng, and Noelani Piters
feat. Tianna Mae Andresen, Nathan Aurellano, Elenita Makani O’Malley, Mark Tran, and Kerry Wong
APAture is an annual, month-long multidisciplinary arts festival that showcases emerging Asian American and Pacific Islander artists to an audience of nearly 1,000 in venues throughout San Francisco. It draws diverse attendees from across the Bay Area, offering critical platforms for Asian American and Pacific Islander art that uplifts those communities and, in today’s political environment, contributes necessary voices to arts & culture. The receptions are free, while all other showcases are affordably priced.
APAture is in its 27th year of supporting emerging artists from across the Bay Area! From October 17th to December 12th, we’ll be presenting three showcases in Visual, Literary, and Film arts.
This year’s theme is GENERATION. At this pivotal moment for APAture, we turn our focus toward what we inherit, what we cultivate, and what we pass on. GENERATION asks us to seed growth for the future health of our communities while honoring the artistic lineages that have brought us to this moment. As we consider what the next generation of artists will hold and shape, we also recognize our role in tending the conditions that allow them to thrive. With the health of our communities in mind, we celebrate creative inheritance as an active, collective practice—one that bridges past, present, and future through art. We invite artists to reflect on GENERATION in all its meanings: a place of ancestry, mentorship, responsibility, and renewal.
Co-presented by Center for Asian American Media and Hawaiʻi Chamber of Commerce of Northern California. Sponsored by New Moon Massage.
1. Missing Boy (13 min 39 sec)
Nathan Aurellano
Missing Boy (2026) is a short fiction narrative film about an amnesiac mother, who must investigate a distorted version of her home to find her missing son.
2. Home Cooking (1min 27sec)
Kerry Wong
Home Cooking follows a grandmother’s recipe for porridge as she teaches her granddaughter.
3. Oakland Ilokana (15 min)
Elenita Makani O’Malley
Oakland Ilokana (2025) is a short documentary following a 90-year-old Filipina American grandmother — one of the first Filipino children born in 1930s Oakland — as she reflects on a life shaped by migration, displacement, and the women in her community. Seen through the lens of her granddaughter, the film brings four generations of Bay Area Filipinas into focus, exploring the enduring power of memory to connect people across place and time.
4. Mannequin (19 min 43 sec)
Mark Tran
In Oakland’s Little Saigon, Minh, a sleep-deprived father, struggles to care for his infant, Hien, while his wife, Trang leaves for a family funeral in Vietnam. Desperate to find comfort for Hien, he seeks solace in a mannequin dressing it up as Trang. As Minh’s exhaustion deepens, he forms an unsettling bond with the mannequin, blurring the line between reality and fantasy.
5. Inheritance (16 min 09 sec)
Tianna Mae Andresen
What is so unique about being raised by revolution? This multimedia poetic documentary is my love letter to my family and an intergenerational upbringing that has saved my life many times. “Inheritance” resists dehumanizing narratives of the Asian American family, and highlights the struggle, revolutionary love, and hope that exists within our families.