SCREEN | 'Spring After Spring' Parades Around Chinatown x VAFF 2025

"She wanted to see us thrive."

Vancouver Asian Film Festival

Chinese-Peruvian-Canadian local filmmaker Jon Chiang, making his feature debut, directs Spring After Spring, a Vancouver Chinatown-based documentary following three remarkable dancer sisters, Anabel, Val, and Lisa Ho. They reunite to lead the annual Lunar New Year Parade after the death of their mother, dedicated community leader and dance teacher Madame Maria Mimie Ho.

It's largely a familiar story of family legacy and cultural preservation wrapped around the artistic act of dancing and the celebratory spectacle of Chinese New Year. Each sister's trajectory in life extends Mimie's work by their discouraged but determined pursuit of dance in their own unique ways. It's a heartwarming documentation of local Asian heritage, with strong Canadian immigrant ties and themes of resilience and collaboration.

Chiang's documentary captures the bond of sisterhood highlighted by memorable archival and contemporary visual footage of Chinatown's past and present. Spring After Spring, like many other Asian-Canadian works of self-reflection, explores fractured identities of Eastern/Western cultural clashes. Its family history, anchored in dance and culture, cements stories and pursuits of artistic passion by way of our shared legacies.

Spring After Spring premiered at the 2025 Vancouver Asian Film Festival (winning Best Canadian Feature) and screened at the Chinatown Storytelling Centre. It also screens at the VIFF Centre starting February 6th and airs/streams on the Knowledge Network on February 17th.


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