Asian Bitches Speak
Director： Janet Chen (Ma)
Screenwriter：None
Cast：Diana Ma, Janet Chen (Ma)
Producer：Janet Chen (Ma)
Cinematographer：Norbert Shieh
Running Time：17mins
Region：USA
Year：2024
Language：English, Mandarin Chinese
Production Company：None
SYNOPSIS
After generations of cultural silence, years of pandemic anxiety, and one anti-Asian hate crime, queer filmmaker Janet takes her retired single mom Diana on a mental health discovery road trip. Along the way, they lay bare their long-buried family history, and together start the journey of healing.
Director Biography
Janet Chen (Ma) (she/her/hers) is an award-winning film and multimedia director, producer, and educator. Her work often explores community stories of cultural representation, resistance, and resilience through a multigenerational lens. Her latest short film Asian Bitches Speak (2024) was honored with a Special Jury Award for Documentary Short from the 40th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival presented by Visual Communications, a Best Director Award for Short Film from the 31st QFilms Long Beach LGBTQ+ Film Festival and an Audience Choice Award for Experimental Documentary at the 10th Feminist Border Arts Film Festival. The film toured around the U.S. as part of “Resistance & Joy,” a program of the 2025 Color Congress Elev8Docs Distribution Initiative. Janet has also produced various Emmys and Webby-nominated film and multimedia projects. She holds a B.A. in Film Studies from U.C. Irvine, and a M.F.A. in Film & Digital Media: Social Documentation from U.C. Santa Cruz. She has taught filmmaking at the Center for EthnoCommunications at U.C.L.A. and in Film and Media Studies at U.C. Irvine. She was the founding manager and steering committee member of the Asian American Documentary Network (A-Doc), and she is a member of Video Consortium and Brown Girls Doc Mafia (BGDM). Connect with her at @janetchenma on Instagram.
Director's Statement
This mother-daughter journey explores mental health and healing from intergenerational trauma amidst the rise in anti-Asian hate. The film was prompted by an anti-Asian hate crime that my mom survived on 4th of July (Independence Day in the U.S.A.) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The road trip starts two years later at the July 4th parade in our conservative American hometown, and highlights meaningful places of community through California. We examine the trauma from generations of women in our family, and embrace the entanglement of Asian immigrant, female, and LGBTQ+ identities in our search for selfhood. I hope watching our journey can prompt more conversations within families and friends to start their healing journeys. Thank you to the Beijing Queer Film Festival for featuring the film!
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