The 2009 Asian American International Film Festival in New York is just days away -- July 23-26 in New York. Narrative and documentary features will screen at Clearview Chelsea, and short films will screen at the Museum of Chinese in America. In anticipation of the big event, here's another handful of some of the film highlights to check out:

Manilatown is in the Heart
Sun, July 26 @12pm
Directed by Curtis Choy
(Feature) A documentary about the Manongs in San Francisco’s Manilatown and a look into the life of the late poet Al Robles, Manilatown Is In the Heart is a touching eulogy to an activist/historian who was outlived by the vanishing subject that he strived to preserve.

Karma Calling
Fri, July 24 @6:15pm
Sat, July 25 @12pm
Directed by Sarba Das
(Feature) The Raj family is definitely not a household comprised of your stereotypical Asian model minorities living the American Dream. On top of the family’s troubled finances, the family hosts a recently widowed relative, Mausi, a fount of comic disasters.

The Call Center
Sun, July 26 @ 2:15pm
Directed by Rumana Huq
(Short) "The Office" is outsourced to Mumbai in this mockumentary on a telecommunications call center in India.

Tibet in Song
Fri, July 24 @6pm
Directed b Ngawang Choephel
(Feature) Ethnomusicologist Ngawang Choephel travels across Tibet to record and study the rich diversity of traditional folk songs but is arrested by the Chinese government for suspected espionage.

The Eighteenth Birthday Party
Sat, July 25 @ 2:15pm
Directed by Ching-Shen Chuang
(Short) A daughter, no longer able to shoulder her father's obsessive love, chooses to defy him on the occasion of her 18th birthday.