Visual Communications is proud to announce six distinguished individuals who head the 2027 Armed with a Camera Fellowship. Nicole Mairose Dizon, Hsiao Hsia Huang, Merry May Ma, Josiah Mendoza, Uday Misra, and Kimberly Xiong roster the 24th edition of Visual Communications’ flagship program for emerging artists.
Read MoreWe’re thrilled to welcome Sue Ding, Faroukh Virani, and Norbert Shieh to our 2026-2027 AWC Mentors team
Read MoreMeet one of our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera (AWC) fellows, Alfred Bordallo! Alfred is a CHamoru visual artist from Guåhan currently based in Los Angeles. His work focuses on recollecting and honoring the fragmented and, more importantly, repurposed facets of CHamoru identity through the analog mediums of photography and video.
Read MoreMeet one of our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera (AWC) fellows, Bryson Nihipali! Bryson is a visual artist born and raised in Los Angeles with a passion for both photography and filmmaking. With ancestral ties to the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands, he draws much inspiration for his photographic work from his family and their rich cultural heritage.
Read MoreMeet one of our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera (AWC) fellows, Zaynah Waseem! As a Pakistani-American, her work uplifts the diverse stories of South Asian, Muslim communities through ethnographic film, media production, digital storytelling, and archival research.
Read MoreMeet one of our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera (AWC) fellows, Honestine Pa'ala-Fraser! Honestine (she/her) is a writer and social media professional born and raised in the Los Angeles area. She graduated from CSU Long Beach with a BA in Communication Studies and went on to Syracuse University to receive her MS in Digital Communications.
Read MoreMeet one of our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera (AWC) fellows, Kayli Kimura! Kayli Kimura (she/her) is a Japanese-American creative director, visual storyteller, and talent manager. Her work spans across various genres with a focus on non-fiction storytelling and musically-driven films.
Read MoreMeet one of our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera (AWC) fellows, Paula Kiley! Paula Kiley (she/her) is a multimedia journalist and documentary filmmaker who strives to tell stories that connect and empower people with information, the truth, and most importantly — one another.
Read MoreMeet our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera Mentors – Veialu Aila-Unsworth & Asavari Kumar!
Read MoreSo Young Shelly Yo is a first-generation, Korean American filmmaker based in Los Angeles. Her short films have screened and received accolades at film festivals around the world, including LAAPFF. As an AWC fellow, she challenged herself with making a short documentary after a number of widely-screened and award-winning narrative shorts.
Read more about Shelly’s AWC fellowship experience, her first feature film, and what she has been up to!
Read MorePerformance artist, comedian, writer, and Pulitzer Prize finalist in Drama, Kristina Wong describes her aesthetic as “subversive, humorous, and endearingly inappropriate”, Wong employs humor to address difficult subjects, social issues, and amplify marginalized experiences.
Read more about how AWC shaped the future of Kristina’s performance work and what projects she has been working on.
Read MoreA Maryland-raised, Los Angeles-based filmmaker, Jeff Man attributes his success as an artist to the community and friends he made through VC and his 2012 AWC Fellowship. After writing and directing Santa Claus (2017), which received a Special Jury Mention at the San Diego Asian Film Festival, Jeff is excited to continue his career and direct his first feature-length film in 2023.
Read more about how participating in AWC, LAAPFF, and being a Digital Histories instructor shaped Jeff into the person and artist he is today.
Read MoreAs a second-generation Cambodian American raised in Cambodia Town, Brandon attributed his passion for filmmaking to its ability to empower communities. When Brandon Soun made his short documentary Cambodia Town: Not for Sale in 2019, he did not expect it to become the first of a trilogy.
Read more about Brandon, his love and ties to the community, his learnings during the making of these short films and what the community can achieve when people come together.
Read MoreShaun Vivaris, a New York-raised and Los Angeles-based filmmaker, has found his community after his 2016–2017 Armed With a Camera Fellowship. A natural storyteller and formerly aspiring novelist who makes genre-bending fantasies that have screened at multiple international film festivals, Shaun strives in his works for authentic Asian American characters and stories beyond mere representation.
In light of the release of his first feature film Lisa Mania on August 23, we checked in with Shaun and discussed his career since his AWC Fellowship, the making of Lisa Mania, his creative process and how he found a community through VC.
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