“Most people know me more for my interest in food than in film,” Firesheets said. 

Nonetheless, a film festival she dreamed up is set to become reality. Pan-Asian Voices and Experiences of North Carolina, an initiative she helped found, is partnering with the Greensboro History Museum to host an Asian American and Pacific Islander film festival at the history museum on April 27.

The festival is set to take place from 12-2 p.m. next Saturday at the history museum in Greensboro. It’s free and open to the public. Firesheets and co-organizer Stefan DiMuzio plan to show short films from six local Asian American and Pacific Islander filmmakers, with a panel discussion to follow. To the organizers’ knowledge, it’s the first of its kind for the city. 

The filmmakers are all either based in Greensboro or currently studying at UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. 

• Howard Affandi, a sophomore undergraduate in the UNCSA school of filmmaking, who was born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia.
• Paul Byun, a Korean American filmmaker and commercial video producer
• Sachi Dely, an artist, filmmaker and actor who came to the United States in 2002 as a refugee from Vietnam.
• DiMuzio, a project manager, musician and photographer who was born and raised in Tokyo, Japan. 
• Richie Iden, an editor and filmmaker attending UNCSA, who was adopted from Seoul, South Korea and grew up in West Virginia
• Minh Ngo, a student at UNCSA, who previously lived in Hanoi, Vietnam, Hawaii and England

Pan-Asian Voices and Experiences, an initiative aimed at sharing the stories and experience of local Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, was started by Christie Soper and Firesheets in 2021. For a while, they had a website that would publish those stories and they would hold an event each year.

Firesheets, who now works for Pace Communications, isn’t a filmmaker or film expert, but as a Korean American, she has appreciated what she’s seen as an increase in representation in movies and TV, including more roles for Asian actors.

So she had the idea that for 2023 part of such a gathering could be holding screenings of films depicting people of Asian descent at various sites in Greensboro — maybe “Mulan” in Center City Park, for example.

That plan fell through, but Firesheets said she’s pleased with the direction they settled on instead.  

“This is more of an opportunity to show work from creative AAPIs in our own community,” she said. “To me, that’s even more special.”

Firesheets said Dely’s film “My Mother’s Hands” will be “very much rooted in her Vietnamese refugee experience, and her family’s experience.” 

But she said not all films will centered on Asian American or Pacific Islander subject matter. 

For example, DiMuzio explained that his award-winning film “Vocafoli” is a three-minute experimental comedy where he used his own voice for all the sound effects, even, for example, for cars honking.

“I don’t know what fever dream constructed this concept to me,” he said. 

His favorite part of filmmaking, he said, is finally seeing how the shots he’s filmed come out in post-production, after he’s manipulated the tone of the colors, through a process called color-grading. 

“That’s the when the biggest smiles on my face will come around,” he said. “When it works, oh my god, it’s great.”

Firesheets and DiMuzio hope the festival will help provide an opportunity for people to see perspectives they might not otherwise have explored. 

“Sometimes, we don’t even how how to learn about it, or how to find stories created by folks with different experiences,” Firesheets said. “Our lineup is AAPI, but I’m hoping our audience is going to be much wider.”