Parasite's Academy Awards haul - best picture, director, original screenplay and international feature film - was both surprising and impressive.

The Oscars have often been criticised for a lack of diversity both in terms of membership and artistic choices. While diversity is still an issue - no African-American director has ever won an Oscar, for example - we've seen Hispanic directors win Oscars in recent years.

Things might be gradually changing: perhaps new, younger, different blood is being injected into the Academy membership (and those who vote) and it's having an effect.

In terms of Asian filmmaking, Taiwanese Ang Lee has won two best director Oscars, albeit for English-language films (Brokeback Mountain and Life of Pi), neither typical "Oscar movies".

Asian films have won other foreign language film (as the category used to be called) Oscars: in addition to Parasite, the Japanese films Rashomon, Gate of Hell (which also won for Sanzo Wada's costume design) and Samura, the Legend of Musashi all won in the 1950s.

In the 2000s, Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Japanese film Departures and the Iranian films A Separation and The Salesman also won gold statuettes. Lee's film also won Oscars for its art and set direction, score and cinematography.

Other Asian Oscar winners include Anglo-Indian Ben Kingsley (best actor for Gandhi), Chinese-Cambodian Haing S. Ngor (best supporting actor for The Killing Fields) and Japanese-American Myoshi Umeki (best supporting actress for Sayonara).

Chinese-American cinematographer James Wong Howe won two Oscars in a career that lasted more than 50 years - for Hud and The Rose Tattoo - out of 10 nominations. Also notable is that A.R. Rahman won two Oscars - score and song - for Slumdog Millionaire.

Whether Minari is among the Oscar nominees this year remains to be seen.