The film

Centuries and Still (2021): format, credits and coverage

A short documentary made in a few months of 2021 by a mostly volunteer team, released free online and picked up by film, design and Asian-American media.

Title

Centuries and Still

Year

2021, premiered on Vimeo on 14 July 2021 (Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere)

Director, editor

Sally Tran

Producer

Phuong Vo

Cinematography

Isabella Tan

Art direction

Thuy T. Nguyen

Illustration

A group of artists including Sang Oh and Vivian Zhang

Voices

Joyce Keokham, Cyrena Lee, Giullian Yao Gioiello

Sound design and mix

Calvin Pia

Genre

Documentary, experimental, mixed media

Formats

16mm, Super 8, VHS and digital, chosen to match the decade on screen

Preceded by

60 Years and Still (2020)

These credits are as listed in the coverage cited below. They are not complete; the film's own credit roll is the authoritative list.

How it was made

According to NextShark, the project began in April 2021 as a non-profit effort. That was a month after the Atlanta spa shootings, in which six of the eight people killed were women of Asian descent. Tran and producer Phuong Vo brought together Asian artists, mostly women, and gave each one or two scenes to build. That is why the film changes texture from scene to scene. Paper cut-outs sit next to miniatures, and archival sound runs under new voiceover.

The format choice does real work. Scenes from the nineteenth century are handled as illustration. Mid-century material has the grain of 16mm and Super 8. The 1980s and 1990s arrive on VHS, and the present is shot digitally. The article on period formats covers what each of those does to an image.

What it covers

Film Shortage says the film aims "to unveil how history took part in the birth and perpetuation" of the anti-Asian hate and crimes of 2020–21. It moves from the exclusion laws and massacres of the nineteenth century through wartime incarceration to recent attacks. The coverage specifically mentions the killing of 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee in San Francisco and the assault on Noel Quintana, 61, on the New York subway, both in early 2021. The dated background is on the timeline page.

Coverage