The 2025 Asian World Film Festival (AWFF) returned to Culver City with a constellation of movies from throughout Asia — tales formed by custom, creativity and creativeness. As the pageant’s premier accomplice, Samsung Electronics introduced its Onyx Cinema LED know-how to the middle of this celebration, providing audiences a viewing expertise that honored the craft behind every movie.
Now in its 11th yr, AWFF continues its mission of elevating Asian filmmakers onto the worldwide stage. This yr, Samsung’s participation added one thing quietly significant: not a brand new layer of know-how, however a brand new stage of care in how every story meets its viewers.
Filmmakers See Their Stories in a New Light
For many administrators premiering work at AWFF, seeing their movies on an Onyx Cinema LED display screen was greater than a technical improve, it was a second of recognition. With conventional projection, even delicate variations in brightness, shadow or shade can shift the expertise away from how a movie ought to have felt. But contained in the Onyx auditoriums, filmmakers discovered the model of their movie that almost all carefully resembled what they created within the grading suite.
For Al Chang, director of the brief movie “Cindy,” the distinction was rapid. After screening movies in a variety of theaters, he was struck by the consistency and readability: “I’ve had short films screen in a lot of theaters, and there’s always some variation — washed-out blacks or colors that don’t translate the way we graded them. Here, it was like watching it on my own TV.”
Executive producer Kira T. Bixby, whose movie “Rooftop” tells a Korean American story rooted in Los Angeles, emphasised how a lot the picture supported the story’s emotion. “Everything really popped for us — the colors, the compositions, the details we worked so hard to craft,” she mentioned. “Film is such a visual language, so how you’re able to see it really matters.”
“Seeing movies presented with this level of precision gives filmmakers confidence that their work is being treated with respect.”
— Asel Sherniyazova, Co-Founder and Managing Director, AWFF
The expertise resonated with filmmakers from the Korean Parallel Smartphone Film Festival (KPSFF) as properly — a program that empowers creators and performers, together with these with disabilities, to make movies utilizing smartphones. Seeing their work on a big LED cinema display screen was each sudden and affirming.
Director Byun Seung Chae, identified for her color-driven storytelling, recalled the second the movie started: “What struck me right away was how unbelievably clear the image was. The colors were beautiful, and I was amazed that a film could look that sharp on such a large screen. I turned to the person next to me and said, ‘I didn’t expect it to look this good!’”
LA-based filmmaker Zenon Samuels, who attended the pageant and works extensively with nighttime visuals and neon-heavy palettes, echoed that sentiment after experiencing an Onyx screening for the primary time. “The blacks are super dark, and with a film that’s so bright and colorful, the high dynamic range made the colors really pop and helped bring the energy and nighttime aesthetic to life.”
Together, these voices mirrored a constant theme: Onyx didn’t alter their movies — it revered and faithfully recreated the alternatives behind them. For administrators and performers seeing their work on this format,…
