From 1981 to 1984, ACV spun off a traveling version of their festival that toured the U.S. CAAM partnered with ACV to showcase their traveling festival in San Francisco, adding in other films by local filmmakers to help round out the program.

[citation needed] Although the festival originally began with exclusively Asian American work, over the course of the 1990s, they expanded to include works from Asian filmmakers,[8][9] reflecting an attention to the increasingly transnational forms of media moving between Asia and America.

[11] The new Festival will showcase film as well as other avenues of artistic expression and community engagement, such as music, food, and interactive workshops.

The documentary film Linsanity premiered at CAAMFest on March 14, 2013,[15] and won several audience awards.

The Vietnamese comedy film How to Fight in Six Inch Heels had its U.S. premiere at CAAMFest on March 13, 2014.