Film: The Only Language She Knows featuring SF Poet Laureate Genny Lim

The Only Language She Knows is an intimate portrait of poet and playwright Genny Lim and San Francisco’s Chinatown in the early 1980s. This rarely seen film, recently restored and remastered, will be screened for the first time in more than 40 years.

This special screening honors one of the city’s treasured gems, Genny Lim—who has been a vital and irresistible force in the cultural, social, and political life of the Bay Area for fifty years; who, in 1980, premiered her groundbreaking play Paper Angels, about Chinese immigrants on Angel Island; and who, in 2026, is San Francisco’s first Chinese American Poet Laureate.

The Only Language She Knows, shot in three days with no budget, was a collaboration among Asian American artists during the early stages of their careers. It was the second film by Steven Okazaki, who received his first Oscar nomination two years later and won the Oscar five years after that for his short documentary Days of Waiting. Producer Amy Hill, then an actor with the Asian American Theater Company, has most recently been heard as a voice in Kung Fu Panda and seen in main roles on Magnum P.I. and Ballard. The film also features cameos by Asian American Theater Company regulars Victor Wong and Dennis Dun, who went on to co-star in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor and John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China, and Kelvin Han Yee, the star of Peter Wang’s A Great Wall, familiar for his TV performances in Beef, Law & Order, and Glow.

Celebrating its 44th year in 2026, CAAMFest is the nation’s leading showcase for films from Asian America and beyond. This year’s festival takes place May 7-10 in San Francisco Japantown., the nation’s largest, longest-running festival dedicated to showcasing new Asian American and Asian films. Presented annually by the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), this San Francisco Bay Area event celebrates AAPI Heritage Month through film screenings, panels, and special events.