Through its programming, exhibition, and distribution of works by Asian Pacific Americans, as well as its advocacy and coalition-building efforts, the NAATA actively serves as both a resource and a promoter for minority communities. Essentially, it coordinates many different realms related to contemporary visual culture—the production of films, videos, and new media works; critical writing and scholarship; distribution and television broadcasting; community and educational outreach; and even legislation and lobbying. In short, it serves as a center of information and human resources.

The NAATA was founded as a conscious and concerted effort on the part of filmmakers and producers in the San Francisco area to address the problem of a lack of equal access to public television and radio. With the guidance and commitment of two older organizations, Visual Communications in Los Angeles and Asian CineVision in New York, both of which emerged out of the movements toward racial and social justice in the 1960s, the NAATA was born out of a three-day conference.

The Association works primarily in three programming areas: television broadcast, exhibition (namely, the annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival), and nonbroadcast distribution (more specifically, through their NAATA Distribution Catalog). Through this effort, the organization seeks to support and nurture Asian Pacific American media artists in order to proffer a more accurate representation of their communities to the public. Typically, representations of Asian Americans in American television and film, supporters of the group contend, have led to many false perceptions of this population.

In the 1995 catalog for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, Stephen Gong (film-history scholar and manager of the Pacific Film Archive) argues that the struggles in the career of Sessue Hayakawa (1889–1973, a star of many silent films but perhaps best-known for his role as Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai, 1957) remain emblematic of the price Asian-American actors pay in order to get some screen time. Referring to the stereotypes of Asian Americans, Gong asks: “Do the commercial constraints that have apparently governed mass media from its earliest days still make it a given that public expectations must be fulfilled before artistic vision can be exercised?” The NAATA attempts to respond to this question by presenting—and more importantly, integrating—alternative and self-proclaimed representations by “marginal” peoples into the mainstream media culture.

The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival is the NAATA’s most dramatic effort to provide the public with self-determined images and stories about Asian and Asian-American experiences. Soliciting new and innovative work from within the United States as well as from Canada and other nations, this festival is a collection of vastly diverse film and video programs as well as installations and panel discussions. For too long, many “cultures, faces, and stories have remained ‘in the closet’ or simply invisible,” as the 1995 festival catalog states. Therefore, the purpose of the festival is to acknowledge the world-wide industry of film and video, which includes and represents many works from the Asian diaspora. “Films submitted to the Asian American film festival reflect the heterogeneous and hybrid cultures of Asian American experience,” writes Nerissa S. Balce in her analysis of the 2001 festival. These works “speak to the collective experience of ‘Asian/Americans’: as people of color, as immigrants, as youth, as queers, as suburbanites, as rural or urban folk, as undocumented workers, as professionals or the working class” (see Balce).

The NAATA’s film, video, and audio distribution service has amalgamated a collection of film and video by and about Asian Pacific Americans that serve to challenge the construction and meaning of “Asian American.” The intent is to challenge and hopefully change mainstream perceptions of Asian Pacific American identities. Moreover, this service strives not only to foster awareness but also to facilitate discussion, sensitivity, and understanding of cultures that are not one’s own. The uses of such a collection include corporate diversity training, high school and university education, and social and political activism. Through the association’s website (www.naatanet.org), individuals and institutions can order from more than 200 Asian Pacific American films and videos. The online catalog is skillfully organized by topics including media; land/environment; labor; personal stories; health, mental health, and AIDS; sexuality; multiracial/ethnic heritage; youth; art and performance; and U.S. colonialism. The collection is also indexed by title and by ethnicity, and there is a separate index of titles for school-age audiences. In the NAATA’s effort to share the work of Asian Pacific Americans and open up discussion on various issues, the distribution service is a helpful and much-needed resource.

The NAATA offers members monthly electronic news bulletins that announce events such as screenings and festivals, and it publishes on its website extensive information about the NAATA’s Media Fund, which since 1990 has used funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to sponsor more than 150 Asian Pacific American film and video projects, many of which have aired locally or nationally on public broadcasting stations. The website also keeps readers updated on past, current, and upcoming Asian Pacific American programming on television; presents in formation for educators; and provides a forum for individuals to make announcements, list job openings, offer assistance, and otherwise participate in the Asian American arts community.

The significance of the NAATA within the media industry is that it sets up a series of connections: it links sponsors to media artists, to distributors, and to larger mainstream venues, all in an attempt to correct the misrepresentation and misperception of minority peoples and histories. The NAATA is both an artistic and a political organization, currently working to ensure that the voices and experiences of people who are often unheard and unknown are made more public and better understood.