#APAParkCity Wraps "Sweet 16" Edition in Style
/By Abraham Ferrer
Three days. Five events. Two parties. And a whopping eight filmmaker panels, comprising over thirty speakers for a total audiences of nearly 800 cinematic and media artists, activists, and casual movie-goers. Running from Jan 24th to Jan 26th, the “Sweet 16” edition of the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience in Park City certainly did not lack for participants. Indeed, since 2002, the Experience — a coalition-style collaborative effort among APA media arts and artist organizations that included Visual Communications, David Magdael & Associates, Kollaboration, the Center for Asian American Media, Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, Asia Society/Southern California, Gold House, the Asian American Documentary Network, and Asians in Hollywood — has sought to create a space whereby filmmakers with works premiering at the Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals are foregrounded and celebrated by the ever-increasing APA communities that annually make the trek to Park City, Utah for the first and arguably the most-anticipated celebration of independent cinema on the film festival calendar.
The plethora of speaker panels was no accident: with the increasing profile of works by filmmakers of color in recent years, the need to expand the range of activities that #APAParkCity organizers create for Sundance and Slamdance filmmakers has morphed from an annual dinner buffet and mixer, to a series that affords a critical opportunity for Asian American, Pacific Islander, and Asian international creatives to celebrate their achievements while addressing the systemic obstacles that continue to inhibit the AAPI cinematic communities’ enfranchisement in the entertainment industry.
“As generations of creators and consumers change and expand, the need to center and celebrate our Asian Pacific and Asian American artists and stories are more necessary than ever,” said David Magdael, who co-founded #APAParkCity in 2002 with then-Visual Communications Executive Director Linda Mabalot and fellow publicist Winston Emano. “Our own communities have finally become more supportive of our artists and their stories. In turn, this generation of AAPIs who both create and consume cinematic content — they aren’t waiting for someone else to greenlight their stories. They are making their stories and not waiting for permission to do so.”
Magdael added, “More than ever, our Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience in Park City has become important and necessary. We continue to push our communities to come to Park City, come to Sundance and Slamdance, and represent and support our filmmakers. And with the inclusion of filmmaker panels addressing pertinent topics and issues of vital important to us all, this annual happening enhances and amplifies our celebration of our films and our filmmakers.”
“The AAPI lens is an integral part of the human experience,” added Laarni Rosca Dacanay, an #APAParkCity organizing member and chairperson of the PBS SoCal Asian Pacific Islander Community Council. “With events like the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience, we are able to support telling all our diverse stories and showing the world how vibrant our AAPI community is.”
Anchored by a pair of filmmaker panels that punctuated the #APAParkCity “Main Event” programs on Park City Sunday at the Wellhaus/Old Town Cellars along Main Street, the stellar line-up of panel events and speakers throughout this year’s edition spoke not only to the broad range of artistic expressions showcased at both Park City festivals, but offered a chance to offer strategies on how to be competitive and successful in this entertainment “new normal.”
That ongoing struggle for enfranchisement provided the underpinnings for the gaggle of boisterous actors who shared their thoughts with NBC News reporter Kimmy Yam in “Unfolding Narratives: Our Stories to Tell,” the HBO/TBS panel in partnership with #APAParkCity that kicked things off on Friday, Jan. 24. Karan Soni, a co-star with fellow panelist Geraldine Viswanathan of the TBS anthology comedy MIRACLE WORKERS, recounted his struggles as an actor of color out of USC before gaining a crucial foothold through independent streaming series and commercials (a mainstay of the raunchy DEADPOOL blockbuster films, Soni is also known as a Diet Coke pitchman). Geraldine, a comedic actor in her native Australia, along with fellow actors Suzy Nakamura (DR. KEN) and Alexander Hodge (INSECURE) likewise amplified the improved climate for Asian American and Asian actors to land more nuanced roles in Hollywood, though they cautioned that the path to a rewarding, sustained career remains fraught with challenges as being offered stereotypical parts and a lack of imagination on the part of producers and writers to create more significant characters for them and their peers. #APAParkCity organizer Minji Chang, who can be seen in the upcoming feature LISA MANIA, foregrounded her role in the long-running talent incubator Kollaboration as one way through which Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders can access and even create meaningful onscreen roles in the mainstream.
Day Two, January 25, saw a dizzyingly rapid-fire trio of panels at the Kimball Arts Center organized by the Asia Society’s Northern and Southern California chapters and Harbour, and hosted by longtime producer Janet Yang. In the lead-off panel “Producers: Women Hold Up Half the Sky at Sundance”, festival perenniels Nina Yang Bongiovi (FRUITVALE STATION; ROXANNE, ROXANNE; SORRY TO BOTHER YOU), Mynette Louie (I CARRY YOU WITH ME), and Naja Lockwood (co-founder, Gamechanger Films; executive producer, GOOK; LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM) shared how each of them got their start as producers as well as the setbacks each of them experienced as they worked to gain a foothold in the independent producing sphere.
In the ensuing panel entitled “Directors: Telling Original Stories”, Los Angeles-based director Edson Oda and documentary director/producer Bao Nguyen ranged over the myriad choices each of them made in creating a narrative feature that works more like a piece of personal cinema (Oda’s NINE DAYS, a Sundance Narrative Competition selection), and a documentary that relied heavily upon historical and home-movie footage (Nguyen’s BE WATER, which screened in Documentary Competition). In the final panel “Actors: Cutting It On The Big Screen”, moderator Yang played host to Chris Pang (PALMS SPRINGS), Benedict Wong (NINE DAYS), and Daniel Dae Kim (BLAST BEAT) to discuss their projects that were screening at the Sundance Film Festival.
The jam-packed Day Three activities on Sunday, January 26 saw the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience return to the Kimball Arts Center for the CAAM-sponsored panel “Shouldering the Future.” #APAParkCity’s David Magdael moderated a panel composed of women film professionals whose influence on independent media has been, in a word, profound. Effie Brown, CEO of the recently-formed Gamechanger Films, regaled the capacity audience with her experiences facing institutional racism throughout the mainstream entertainment industry, and how those struggles informed her sense of determination in being an agent of change on behalf of cinematic artists of color. Noted film/television editor and producer Jean Tsien recounted her rise as the “go-to” editor and mentor of many independent productions over a nearly twenty year career to observe the emergence of a new generation of APA cinema artists, while Sheroum Kim recounted her journey from a staffer at a Hollywood talent agency to her current position as Director of Original Independent Film at Netflix. The trio encouraged media makers in the audience to always lend a helping hand to the next generation of artists who will follow them, and cautioned that not only their skills, but their sense of value and self-worth will always be challenged.
From Kimball Arts Center, it was a quick dash up to the Firelight House and the panel “Power To The POC”, which was organized by the Asian American Documentary Network. Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker Grace Lee led a talk spotlighting the burgeoning role of people of color in production, distribution, and policy-making on behalf of minority filmmakers. Grace was joined by Gina Duncan, Associate Vice President of Film and Strategic Programming at the Brooklyn Academy of Music; Laura Kim, Senior Vice President of Marketing at Participant Media; Carrie Lozano, Director of the International Documentary Association’s Enterprise Fund and Pare Lorentz Fund; and Cynthia López, Executive Director of New York Women in Film & Television.
Finally, the action shifted back up to Main Street Park City, where #APAParkCity’s “Main Event” activities kicked off a pair of panels assessing the need for APA filmmakers and entertainment professionals to “up” their game in this nascent decade. As part of the first panel, “Changemakers,” Magdael sprinted back from Kimball Arts Center to the overflow Wellhaus/Old Town Cellars to host a gathering of media professionals and, in some cases, old friends in a frank discussion of the ways in which APAs are creating space for artists of color to succeed in the independent and mainstream arena. The panel, including Mahin Ibrahim of The Walt Disney Company, Christina Chou of Creative Artists Agency, ARRAY President Tilane Jones, filmmaker and producer Derek Nguyen, and Michelle Sugihara – Executive Director of the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainme, touched on a number of issues that centered around strategies for comprehensive support and talent incubation from within the APA creative communities. Jones, no stranger to past #APAParkCity panels, referenced the intentionality of establishing multi-award-winning director/producer Ava DuVernay’s distribution/production company ARRAY within Los Angeles’ Historic Filipinotown as a means of centering their company within an ethnic creative hub; while Chou elicited “oohs” and “ahas” in mentioning that as part of her efforts to make an impact on behalf of the APA cinematic community, she shepherded the creation of Lee Isaac Chung’s Sundance Grand Jury Award-winning narrative MINARI. Ibrahim, director of The Walt Disney Company’s Multicultural Audience Engagement initiative, described her efforts to establish Launchpad, a Disney incubator program for filmmakers from underserved communities, while Nguyen shared news of his role in launching The Population, a film production company in collaboration with fellow #APAParkCity alum Mynette Louie and Mollye Asher. Sugihara, who in five years transformed CAPE into a vibrant talent incubator and advocate on behalf of Asian American and Pacific Islander cinematic talents, amplified her fellow panelists efforts to catalyze their collective resources and experiences for the benefit of our creative communities.
Video recap edited by Jo Saen Ronquillo
The final #APAParkcity panel “Truthtellers” featured longtime documentarians Bao Nguyen (BE WATER), Ramona Diaz (A THOUSAND CUTS), and Shalini Kantayya (CODED BIAS). Moderated by Andrew Ahn (SPA NIGHT, DRIVEWAYS) the panelists shared their perspectives on the urgency of their stories, and the reactions they were preparing to receive from Park City audiences that weekend. The night ended with a performance by Bay Area hip-hop artist Ruby Ibarra, who lent serious rhymes to Diaz’ A THOUSAND CUTS; and a quick shout-out by journalist Dino-Ray Ramos, who implored the audience to support and help sustain the storytelling instincts of AAPI filmmakers. In assessing the overall impact of #APAParkCity 2020, co-organizer Minji Chang noted the commitment of the combined Sundance/Slamdance communities. “It's further proof that diversity in film is not a passing trend, but a much needed reflection and expression of our true experiences and authentic realities. By creating spaces for underrepresented voices to be heard, we are opening up minds and opportunities for progress to happen swiftly and effectively.”
In the end, the events of the “Sweet 16” edition of the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience are inspired by our creative communities’ storytelling and ability to foreground our experiences and perspectives, and that we cannot count on others to tells those stories accurately and honestly.
The “Sweet 16” edition of the Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience in Park City was generously co-hosted by The Walt Disney Company, Home Box Office, Inc., Comcast/NBCUniversal, the Center for Asian American Media, and SAG/AFTRA.
And finally, a Special Thanks to the #APAParkCity Organizing team, panelists, and volunteers: Linda Mabalot, Founding #APAParkCity member (Posthumous); Irene Cho, Sustaining #APAParkCity member (Posthumous); Andrew Ahn; Nina Yang Bongiovi; Effie Brown; Minji Chang; Janet Chen; S. Leo Chiang; Christina Chou; Roshini Chuganey; Margaret Conley; Tricia Coonrad; Francis Cullado; Laarni Rosca Dacanay; Susan Jin Davis; Gina Duncan; Henry Eshelman; Abraham Ferrer; Ellen Huang; Ruby Ibarra; Mahin Ibrahim; Tilane Jones; Jess; Shalini Kantayya; Chris Kim; Daniel Dae Kim; Laura Kim; Sheroum Kim; Ileana Lagares; Megan Lau; Grace Lee; Ed Lew; Kyra Lewis; Naja Lockwood; Cynthia López; Mynette Louie; Carrie Lozano|; David Magdael; Verna Myers; Masashi Niwano; Bao Nguyen; Derek Nguyen; Edson Oda; Chris Pang; Tyng Pan; Raymond Perkins; Deborah Renteria; JoSaen Ronquillo; Sapana Sakya; Rachelle Samson; Stephanie Shih; Michelle Sugihara; Jean Tsien; Nicole Tsien; Rexille; Janna Wang; Panney Wei; John Wirfs; Benedict Wong; Jo-Ann Wong; Dorothy Xiao; Janet Yang; Donald Young; and Marvin Yueh
