Announcing the Theme for the 2027 AA Stories Video Contest – “Our Food, Our Stories”
The theme for the 2027 Asian American Stories Video Contest is: “Our Food, Our Stories” (Legacy, Resilience, and the American Table)
Food tells stories that words alone often cannot.
A family recipe can carry the memory of a homeland. A neighborhood restaurant can become a community’s gathering place. A lunchbox packed with unfamiliar aromas can reveal both the pain of exclusion and the pride of belonging. Across generations, food preserves traditions, fuels dreams, and creates opportunities for connection.
For the 2027 Asian American Stories Video Contest, we invite participants to explore the Asian American experience through one of its most universal expressions: food.
Our Food, Our Stories: Legacy, Resilience, and the American Table is not simply about cooking or cuisine. It is about the journeys behind every dish—the sacrifices of immigrants, the resilience of families, the dignity of work, the creativity of new generations, and the countless ways Asian Americans have enriched the cultural fabric of the United States.
Food is both deeply meaningful and profoundly joyful. It is comfort and celebration, memory and innovation. It invites curiosity, sparks conversation, and brings strangers together around a shared table.
Through documentary, narrative, animation, or experimental storytelling, filmmakers are challenged to answer an enduring question:
How have the flavors carried across oceans transformed not only what America eats, but how America understands itself?
The Three Narrative Pillars
Participants are encouraged to build their stories around one or more of the following pillars.
Pillar I: Heritage, Memory, and the Transmission of Culture
Food as a Living Archive
Recipes often survive where written histories do not.
A grandmother’s dumplings, a father’s curry, an auntie’s adobo, or a family’s bánh chưng can become vessels of identity passed from one generation to the next.
Films may explore:
The Language of Care
In many Asian cultures, love is expressed not through grand declarations, but through a simple question: “Have you eaten yet?” Across communities, this phrase reflects care, belonging, and concern.
Examples include:
Mandarin: 你吃饭了吗？ (Nǐ chī fàn le ma?)
Cantonese: 你食咗飯未？ (Néi sihk jó faan mei?)
Korean: 식사하셨어요? (Siksa haseoss-eoyo?)
Vietnamese: Bạn ăn cơm chưa?
Tagalog: Kumain ka na?
Thai: กินข้าวหรือยัง
Hindi: क्या आपने खाना खाया?
Bengali: তুমি কি ভাত খেয়েছো?
How does food bridge generations, cultures, and languages within your family?
Preserving the Code
How does a single recipe carry the story of migration?
Explore the ingenuity required to recreate familiar tastes in unfamiliar places—the search for ingredients, substitutions born of necessity, and the determination to preserve tradition.
The Comfort of the Familiar
What dishes make a place feel like home?
How do flavors anchor identity amid change, displacement, or assimilation?
Pillar II: Economic Launchpads and Community Anchors
Food as Opportunity and Resilience
Behind every bustling dining room and neighborhood market lies a story of sacrifice and perseverance. For generations of Asian Americans, food businesses became pathways toward economic stability and upward mobility.
Films may explore:
The Small Business Engine
Restaurants, bakeries, food trucks, tea shops, and grocery stores often provided immigrant families with their first opportunity to build economic security. How did these enterprises create futures for subsequent generations?
The Kitchen Sanctuary
Food establishments frequently became informal community centers.
They offered:
employment opportunities,
familiar languages and dialects,
practical advice,
mutual support,
and a sense of belonging.
How did these spaces sustain immigrant communities?
The Dignity of Labor
Celebrate the resilience, discipline, and pride of those whose long hours transformed modest beginnings into lasting legacies. What sacrifices made today’s opportunities possible?
Pillar III: Innovation, Cultural Exchange, and the Shared Table
Food as a Bridge Between Communities
Cuisine evolves.
It travels, adapts, and inspires. Food possesses a unique power to break down barriers and create common ground.
Films may explore:
From Margins to Mainstream
Many Asian Americans remember being teased for bringing unfamiliar foods to school. Today, dishes once considered “foreign” have become beloved parts of American life.
How did that transformation occur? What does it reveal about changing attitudes toward identity and belonging?
Creative Reinvention
Highlight chefs, entrepreneurs, home cooks, and creators who reinterpret tradition. Fusion, experimentation, and innovation demonstrate that culture is not static—it is alive. How are younger generations redefining what authenticity means?
The Shared Table
A meal invites conversation. Food encourages curiosity, laughter, hospitality, and friendship. How can sharing food foster empathy and strengthen communities across differences?
The Creative Challenge
Food nourishes more than the body. It preserves memory, honors sacrifice, fuels ambition, and creates belonging. It reminds us where we came from while inviting others to join us at the table.
For the 2027 Asian American Stories Video Contest, we invite participants to tell stories that are intimate yet universal, deeply rooted yet forward-looking.
Show us the recipes that survived migration.
The kitchens that built communities.
The flavors that became part of America’s identity.
The meals that opened hearts and minds.
Tell us how the foods carried across oceans helped shape the American story—one dish, one family, and one shared table at a time.
Our Food, Our Stories: Legacy, Resilience, and the American Table.Because every meal has a history. Every recipe carries a journey. And every story deserves a place at the table.
