LATEST NEWS
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.
Visual Communications Receives 2023 NEA Grant for Arts Projects
The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced the first round of recommended awards for fiscal year 2023, with more than $34 million in funding to support the arts nationwide. This is the first of the NEA’s two major grant announcements each fiscal year and includes grants to organizations through the NEA’s Grants for Arts Projects, Challenge America, and Research Awards categories. Visual Communications is grateful to be a recipient of the 2023 Grants for Arts Projects Award to support the Los Angeles Asian American Pacific Film Festival.
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: Remembering Linda Mabalot
In light of the Filipino American History month this year, we highlight and celebrate Linda’s contributions and legacy to both VC and the larger Filipino American community.
Franklin S. Odo (1939–2022)
Franklin Odo, a prominent Asian American Studies scholar, activist and long-time friend and supporter of Visual Communications, passed away on September 28, 2022. A third-generation Japanese American born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, Franklin was a forebear in the Ethic Studies Movement. He was one of the 4 editors of the first anthology focusing on Asian Americans, Roots: An Asian American Reader, which became the nationwide standard textbook in Asian American Studies for many years, and the author of the first VC-published book, In Movement: A Pictorial History of Asian America.
Franklin’s legacy is imposing. We mourn the loss, commemorate and celebrate Franklin’s life and far-reaching contributions and impacts to the many individuals and communities he has touched and uplifted.
Meet a VC Intern: Kathy Ou
Meet Kathy Ou, our 2022 LACDAC Development and Communications Intern! Learn more about her roots in southern China, her curiosity for Asian American history and communities, and her latest obsession with a Chinese dance show!
Vivian Nguyen’s Artistic Vision for LAAPFF PRESENTS: HONG GENERATIONS OF CINEMA
We are glad to be in community with artist and graphic designer Vivian Nguyen, who created the beautiful artwork for LAAPFF PRESENTS: HONG KONG GENERATIONS OF CINEMA. Find out more about Vivian and her inspirations behind this artwork! Thank you, Vivian!
LAAPFF Presents: Hong Kong Generations of Cinema
The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) announced lineup for LAAPFF PRESENTS: HONG KONG GENERATIONS OF CINEMA, sponsored by Hong Kong Economic And Trade Office, San Francisco (HKETO). The special 1-day showcase will take place on October 15th in Los Angeles, at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Grand Ave.
Meet a VC Intern: Cindy Nguyen
Meet Cindy Nguyen, our 2022 LACDAC Programs Intern! Learn more about her coming-of-age from SGV to UCLA, enthusiasm for culture and community, and love for window shopping.
AWC Spotlight | Brandon Soun
As 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.
AWC Spotlight | Shaun Vivaris
Shaun 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.
WE ARE LONG BEACH: OUR STORIES, OUR FUTURE
Visual Communications is grateful to have partnered with United Cambodian Community of Long Beach (UCC) and Cambodia Town Thrives (CTT) to present We Are Long Beach: Our Stories, Our Future, a community arts event created to engage and uplift the Long Beach community of Cambodia Town. The event featured screenings of three documentary short films, including the Long Beach premiere of Conversations at the Register (2022), Cambodia Town Thrives (2022) and Cambodia Town: Not For Sale (2019), followed by discussions and activities guided by local community leaders.
We Are Long Beach: Our Stories, Our Future seeks to amplify local voices and movement, and encouraging solidarity around multicultural issues impacting the local community through sharing and discussing personal stories. We are honored and heart-warmed by the presence and stories of the attendees, and to witness connections being made through the films and issues impacting our communities.
Meet a VC Intern: Jenny Park
Meet Jenny Park, our 2022 Archives Exhibition Intern! Learn more about her experience at VC, her passion for art, art-making, and telling and uncovering stories from the depth of history that uplift and empower the AAPI community.
VC Announces 2022-2023 Armed With a Camera Fellows
Visual Communications seeks to cultivate a rising generation of artists committed to social and political changes and movements, while preserving the legacy and vision of our communities. We seek to support artists who are committed to empowering communities and challenging perspectives through their creative works.
For the 2022 - 2023 cycle, we looked for filmmakers of Pasifika descent, who wish to utilize film to amplify the cultures, experiences, and perspectives of the indigenous peoples of Hawaiʻi, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Guåhan (Guam), Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Sāmoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, and additional islands throughout the Pacific region.
To understand the intention behind this year’s cohort, please read this letter from our Executive Director.
We look forward to creating community with this year's Fellows.
Visual Communications Proud to Receive Durfee's Lark Award for Rest and Replenishment
The Durfee Foundation, which “invests in extraordinary people who are making a better LA,” announced the inaugural cohort of Lark Awards recipients. Durfee’s Lark Awards support the collective care and well-being of staff at small Los Angeles-based nonprofit organizations with deep ties to the community. Each organization will receive $30,000 to spend as they see fit to meet the needs of their staff for replenishment. There are 15 organizations in this inaugural 2022 cohort. They are:
The Women Who Saved VC
Two remaining staffers—Nancy Araki and Linda Mabalot altered the power dynamics of VC; they took it from a male- dominated organization, typical of many community-based organizations born during the transformative 1960s and 1970s, to an organization run and managed by women arts administrators, filmmakers, and advocates.
First Street North: Open
Our growing collective collection of personal stories, oral histories, and documentary footage capture the necessity of Little Tokyo’s First Street North as a site of cultural, familial, and political importance. They detail how the diverse, multicultural communities represented in the area lived their lives amidst a backdrop of change and attempted redevelopment, and how their daily activities manifested concerning these attempts.
America's Concentration Camps, Revisited
Visual Communications’ Historical “Cubes Exhibit” Restored And Debuts As Online Exhibit.
Visual Communications, the nation’s premier Asian American media arts organization, today announced the completion of restoration work of its inaugural production, AMERICA’S CONCENTRATION CAMPS. A mobile photographic exhibit first created as a commission of the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the “Cubes Exhibit,” as the photographic display is affectionately known, represented one of the first instances that the story of Japanese American relocation and confinement during World War II was made widely known to the public.