LATEST NEWS
Visual Communications Unveils 2027 Armed With a Camera Fellowship, Uplifting Emerging AAPI Filmmakers
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.
Meet the 2026-2027 AWC Mentors
We’re thrilled to welcome Sue Ding, Faroukh Virani, and Norbert Shieh to our 2026-2027 AWC Mentors team
AWC Vol. 2023 & HITO HATA Screening at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA)
VC is thrilled to announce we will be going back to Hawai'i to present a collection of films at the Honolulu Museum of Art (HoMA) from May 23-26, 2024!
We Went to Joshua Tree!
As part of our growing practice to center wellness and joy, Visual Communications Staff and 2024 Armed With a Camera Fellows took a renewal trip to Joshua Tree!
Meet the 2023-2024 AWC Mentors
Meet our 2023-2024 Armed With a Camera Mentors – Veialu Aila-Unsworth & Asavari Kumar!
AWC Spotlight | So Young Shelly Yo
So 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!
AWC Spotlight | Kristina Wong
Performance 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.
AWC Spotlight | Jeff Man
A 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.
We Went to Hawai'i!
As part of our growing practice to center wellness and joy, Visual Communications Staff and Armed With a Camera Fellows took a renewal trip to Hawai'i.
“I loved connecting with people in a relaxed and casual atmosphere. It was really important as I came away, not only feeling closer to everyone, but also really valuing the community we have and inspired to keep building community.”
In Focus: AWC 2022-2023
Intersections and convergences are effective ways for us to safely connect with each other. But we also need to be brave and welcome collisions. It’s easy to coalesce as an Asian American & Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander community when we’re going against hate and white supremacy. However, the required work needed for us to build collective power is to confront issues that divide us. From across the dinner table to discuss why Black Lives Matter with our families, to acknowledging Asian settler colonialism in Oceania, these power structures are replicated and represented in media. Most often, our always-present Indigenous interconnections are made invisible.
Filmmaker Profile: Quyên Nguyen-Le
While the latest cycle of Visual Communications' Armed With a Camera Fellowship is barely over, already one of our seven 2015-2016 Fellows' productions is attracting heated attention — NUʼÔʼC, an experimental narrative by Quyên Nguyen-Le, whose filmmaking background has been augmented by studies in Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Politics. In a conversation with VC summer program associate Joey Scher, Quyên talks about the making of NUʼÔʼC and the challenges of applying formalist cinematic languages into short-form filmmaking.