The sixth annual San Diego Asian Film Festival boasts a wide variety of films including three GLBT- focused programs among 130 short and feature films from the U.S., Canada, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Taiwan and the Philippines. It runs from Sept. 29 to Oct. 6 at the new UltraStar Mission Valley at Hazard Center (formally Mann Theatres).

“Family Values, Girl Love, Boys on the Side” (Sunday, Oct. 2 at 7:05 p.m.) is a double feature program addressing parenthood, marriage and the complexities of love. Escondido couple Kathy Hines and Rebecca Burklee produced and directed the 54-minute documentary Creating a Place at the Table along with executive producer Leng Loh. The film takes an intimate look at three San Diego-based multicultural lesbian couples, their families and their children. It has already been screened at Frameline29, the San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

“When we started the documentary, we were mainly looking at multicultural issues among lesbian couples in starting their families,” said Burklee.

The three couples chronicled are Maria and Lenette, a Puerto Rican lesbian couple residing in San Diego; Luisa and Stephanie and Luisa’s Filipino mother who offers unconditional love to her lesbian daughter; and an eight-year estrangement is addressed between Jenny and her Baptist parents, but, unfortunately, Jenny and her partner, Ava, never see their families truly accept them.

Jenny and Ava’s child, Sophea, born through artificial insemination, arrived six weeks premature, requiring a three-month hospital stay. This took a toll on the couple, and Hines and Burklee did not get as much footage as they had hoped during the emotional time.

“We were kind of a lot more limited – more than we would have liked to have been –filming that, but we still covered the story throughout that time,” said Burklee.

Each couple is diverse, and their cultural influences and upbringing play a major role in their present lives with regard to parenting and other aspects of family living.

“We got everybody across the whole gamut as far as family acceptance,” said Hines. Hines added that after the completion of the film, Maria – who had not been completely open about her sexuality with her family – said she had an emotional heart-to-heart conversation with her father and came out. “It was really good for her just to be open with her father and he completely accepted,” said Hines.

Burklee said the title of the film stemmed from family traditions of coming together for meals, with food being a connection to family and culture. “One of the things we found every time we went to film the couples was how they would share food. Their culture was by sharing food with us,” said Burklee. “That was a theme that emerged. As lesbian couples, we are creating another place at the table for ourselves among our families of origin, as well as we are creating our families.”

Floored by Love, the other entry in “Family Values, Girl Love, Boys on the Side”, is a heartwarming comedy television series pilot to be launched this fall. The Vancouver-based show reflects Canada’s multiculturalism with a story of love between a lesbian couple who want to get married. However, one of the women has not come out to her traditional parents yet. A second story in the pilot focuses on newly out of the closet Jesse, who seeks his biological father, who is also gay.

For tickets, call (858) 650-3459, or purchase them online at www.sdaff.org/festival/tickets.php.

The San Diego Film Festival held at the Pacific Gaslamp Theaters Sept 21-25 contains three gay-themed films, including producer/director/writer Nicole Conn’s riveting and multiple award-winning documentary, little man.

The film chronicles the struggles of Nicholas, who was born 100 days premature to a surrogate mother. Weighing in at less than a pound, he’s isolated in an incubator at Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Hospital NICU (neonatal intensive care unit) for 158 days, and his chances of survival are extremely slim.

Conn and her partner, Gwen Baba, used a reputable surrogate agency to arrange for Nicholas’ birth, but the surrogate mother the agency chose was not in the best health and that led to multiple complications.

“Mary is a very sweet and loving person, and I think her intentions are all good,” said Conn. “She was passed through a surrogacy agency and, from what all of our doctors have said, she should not have even been remotely considered a surrogate.”

Mary was in her late 30s when she was impregnated, and had a pre-existing condition called preeclampsia which had induced labor during her pregnancy with her first daughter. The condition resurfaced before Nicholas was born as well.

“By the time we discovered all of this stuff, it was too late in the game. She was already 20 weeks along,” explained Conn. “We were at this place where we had to make a decision whether we were going to keep it or not.”

Baba did not want to go through with the pregnancy, but Conn felt strongly they should.

“I felt him so strongly. I felt his little spirit so strongly. I needed for him to have his chance at destiny,” said Conn. “Although you can argue – and this is what the film is about – [that] it wasn’t his chance at destiny, it was science’s chance for his destiny…. Is science part of everybody’s destiny now? Do we utilize it to its greatest end so we can keep these babies alive, or do we let nature take its course?”

The film tackles all of the trials and tribulations in caring for a premature infant. Today, Nicholas is 3 1/2 years old and is doing well despite a variety of complex medical conditions. He is fed through a central IV because he can’t absorb nutrients properly because of a complication suffered earlier in the hospital where his intestines perforated.

“However, he’s a total natural 3-1/2-year-old toddler who walks and runs around, who wants to get in the dirt, wants to play like a little boy, loves to play ball,” said Conn.

Initially Conn did not have the intention of making a documentary about her own premature son. She had originally planned to chronicle surrogate motherhood.

“I just found it so fascinating that these people could carry a baby even if it wasn’t their embryo, as it was in our case,” said Conn. “It just totally confounded me.”

Cryptically, Conn bought a new camera the day before Nicholas’ sudden birth. She did not do any of the original footage in the film since she was too distraught over whether or not he was going to leave the hospital. Her producing partner and brother took care of all filming in the hospital.

“The footage that we have out of the NICU unit is extremely rare, and it’s going to be even more rare because they enacted the federal privacy laws in April of 2004, and you’re not allowed to shoot in NICU units anymore,” explained Conn.

little man premiered at the Cleveland International Film Festival in March and has won five awards so far this year including the Best Feature HBO Audience Award at the Miami Gay & Lesbian Film International Film Festival. It also won Best Documentary at Los Angeles’ Outfest film festival this past July.

little man plays on Saturday, Sept. 24, at 12:00 noon, and a Q&A with the filmmakers follows.

Another film, entitled Transamerica, plays Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m. It stars “Desperate Housewives” actress Felicity Huffman as a woman on the brink of completing her gender reassignment surgery, who must first deal with a son who was just arrested in New York. Six short films from Los Angeles’ Outfest 2005 will also be screened on Sept. 24 at 2:30 p.m.

The Pacific Gaslamp 15 Theater is located at 701 Fifth Ave. in downtown San Diego. Tickets are available at (619) 582-2368, or online at www.sdff.org.