Debut: 'I'M NOT AN ACTIVIST' Is A Disquieting Masterpiece

“BETWEEN MARCH 2020 AND MARCH 2022, MORE THAN 11,000 ASIAN AMERICANS IN THE UNITED STATES REPORTED ANTI-ASIAN HATE CRIMES.”

So begins Dan Chen’s I’M NOT AN ACTIVIST, a short film about the Dragon Combat Club (DCC). The club is a volunteer group that teaches self-defense classes to New York City’s Asian American community and provides resources to local elders and other vulnerable groups. 

The film spends a week following DCC volunteers around the streets of New York City as they host self-defense classes in mixed martial arts and help the elderly through crowded and dangerous subway stations. With 1990s-esque color grading, varied angles, and shaky camera footage, I’M NOT AN ACTIVIST takes viewers along for the ride. The 10-minute short film is a gritty, boots-on-the-ground documentary outlining the DCC’s origins, goals, and operations, featuring interviews with its organizers, as well as lawmakers and community figureheads. Quick cuts and dynamic camerawork overlay narration by members of the group, who explain that with the rise of anti-Asian hate both in the United States and the city, they see self-defense training, access to self-defense items, and individual empowerment, as the most effective solutions. 

Viewers watch as volunteers train people of all ages, sizes, and abilities in self-defense on a city basketball court lit by warm floodlights, with side glances from wary passersby. As the camera crew follows DCC through the subway and down city streets, viewers see and hear the simmering danger faced by Asian Americans, and are reminded of the short film’s opening scene: security footage of various violent hate crimes from the past few years.

“I’ll kill you, I’ll kill him,” cries out one man on the sidewalk as volunteers return home from a nighttime self-defense class. 

An interview with Henry, who goes by Dr. Z, reveals that the DCC was founded in April of 2020 following violent race-motivated attacks in the city. Dr. Z explains that the community feels sidelined, as the dangerous landscape of racism and COVID-spurred anti-Asian sentiment leaves Asian Americans to fend for themselves.

“As Asian Americans, we really have nowhere to go. We’re politically homeless. . . . We have to find ways to take action other than talking about it.”

As DCC volunteers discuss lukewarm reception towards their organization from lawmakers and media, Chen overlays unstable and at times blurry footage of volunteers grappling and guiding participants in self-defense methods. Interspersed with scenes of NYPD patrol cars and crowded city streets, Chen effectively spotlights the immediate physical danger in which racism places New York’s AAPI community. 

Chong, an instructor at Fordham University and Baruch College, says that critics of the DCC paint the organization as performative. The group gets comments like, “Where were they? They weren’t marching in the summer of 2020,” she says. As viewers watch the DCC demonstrate hold techniques and various self-defense implements, such criticism feels absurd. While watching the Club not only teach self-defense, but provide services by guiding the elderly through the perilous bowels of the subway, the viewer is struck first by the necessity of the DCC’s efforts, and then by the reality of this necessity. 

The DCC has had its share of contentious media interactions, including an article that left volunteers and organizers feeling misunderstood and misrepresented. There are strong opinions both within and from outside of the AAPI community about the efficacy and morality of physical self-defense in the face of violent hate crimes, but I’M NOT AN ACTIVIST takes a stark, no-nonsense look at the organization’s purpose. 

Its aesthetics, from the darkened high-contrast imagery to the close and dynamic shots, do justice to the agitation and turbulence felt by the community at large. Its understated editing and the intimacy of its camera work drive home that the DCC is a grassroots organization, intended to fill a void that should be occupied by the government tasked with protecting its citizens.

I’M NOT AN ACTIVIST does not give the DCC or its operations a glamorous treatment, but it isn’t meant to. The short film is equal parts visually stunning and stark, a frank look at the state of violent racism and the measures needed to protect Asian Americans. In the absence of proper and enforced protections from the government, the short film argues, that effort must come from the community itself. Viewers, especially those from outside the community, may feel uncomfortable with the short film’s bluntness in speech and aesthetics, which is precisely its goal. 

Far from polishing the group it follows, I’M NOT AN ACTIVIST reveals the necessity of self-defense and community organization, and thoroughly demonstrates how troubling it is that such an effort is needed.