VC was created with the understanding that media and the arts are important vehicles to organize and empower communities, build connections between peoples and generations through the development of AAPI film, video, and media. The organization has created award-winning productions, nurtured and given voice to our youth and seniors, promoted new artistic talent, presented new cinema, and preserved our visual history.

Our programming includes: the annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and year round screenings and exhibitions; the Armed With a Camera Fellowship for Emerging Media Artists; the Digital Histories media production and storytelling project for older adults; and C3: Conference for Creative Content.  We are home to the VC Archives, one of the largest photographic and moving image archives on Asian Pacific experiences in America.

VC ARCHIVES

The Visual Communications (VC) Archives is dedicated to preserving the histories, cultures, and experiences of Asian Pacific communities. The VC Archives is recognized as one of the nation’s most comprehensive repositories of 20th Century Asian Pacific American (APA) history. It holds over 750,000 photographic images, 1,500+ titles in the media library, 500+ films and video productions, and 250+ hours of oral histories.

Though it is ethnically specific, the VC Archives affirm a culturally pluralistic view of American society. And this view resides in the heart of our mission – to promote intercultural understanding through the education, production, presentation and preservation of media works by and about APA.

VC ARCHIVES ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

VC Archives Artists in Residence is a new program founded in 2025, in response to the urgency and constraints that so often shape creative work. Rooted in our commitment to resourcing artists as stewards, creators, and extensions of our community-first values, we encourage artists to deconstruct their own processes and imagine new relationships between archives and storytelling.

This residency invites artists to engage with the Visual Communications Archives (VC Archives), one of the largest repositories of Asian American and Pacific Islander media history, as both a site of research and a space for creative reflection. The program centers process over product, offering artists the time and space to question, experiment, and connect without the pressures of rapid production.

With support through mentorship, peer dialogue, and access to various archival resources, each artist will craft their own path within the Archives, contributing to a living, breathing record that continues to grow alongside our communities.

ARMED WITH A CAMERA

"Armed With a Camera captures the stories of peoples in movement. These Artists reflect imagination and adventure, desperation and courage, minds and bodies moving by leaping and struggling towards new possibilities and futures. Asians and Pacific Islanders in America have always had to create stories and present truths about our communities. They are heirs to that heritage and their stories help bind us to that legacy of our struggles, of and for movements, created through media.”

Since 2002, Armed with a Camera Fellowship for Emerging Media Artists (AWC) has developed and supported over 175 Asian American & Native Hawaiian / Pacific Islander filmmakers. Cultivating a rising generation of artists committed to social and political changes and movements, these storytellers have empowered communities and challenged perspectives through their creative works.

DIGITAL HISTORIES

Digital Histories is a program for Asian Pacific American (APA) older adults to use their unique voices and perspectives in sharing stories with future generations.

Since its creation in 2003, Digital Histories has provided a professional and artistic work environment for underserved, ethnic-minority older adults in the Los Angeles-based APA community. Our program aims to connect and engage with the under- and misrepresented population of Asian Pacific Americans in mainstream media in a visible way. Seniors are particularly marginalized and alienated, and a major benefit of our Digital Histories program is for them to connect with new people and discover a new skill.

Each monthly workshop is led and taught by professional artists with expertise in photography and video production in an effort to cultivate each participant’s artistic expression and teach media literacy to underserved older adults and seniors in our community.

Each Digital Histories cycle, we witness the various ways every participant benefits from this program, and we see the positive impact storytelling, allowing artists to explore and share stories of family histories, coming to terms with a gay child, and senior love and dating. The exhibition of these films educate viewers about APA history in California and to illuminate how place helps shape identity and community.

LOS ANGELES ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL

The Visual Communications (VC) Film Festival / Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) is the largest film festival in Southern California dedicated to showcasing films by and about Asians & Pacific Islanders around the world. The annual Film Festival features a robust lineup of in-person programming, along with virtual programming for our audiences at home in Southern California and beyond, and honors our cultural and movement workers who create worlds of truth and imagination.

In our continued work to create spaces for expression, engagement, and empowerment, despite times of social, cultural, and political divisiveness, we celebrate diverse storytellers who believe in the power of our stories to initiate change. When media is weaponized to destroy, these filmmakers build and connect communities. From presenting the stories of our ancestors and beloved elders, to stories unbounded by youthful energies, we bridge present and emerging generations of storytellers to living histories, so they understand that they are part of a movement. A movement rooted in rebellion towards liberation.

Established in 1983 by Visual Communications, the first non-profit organization in the US dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian American and Pacific American peoples, communities, and heritage through the media arts, the Festival has since presented over 6,000 films, videos, and digital mediaworks by Asian & Pacific Islander artists, and features seminars, panels, in-person guest appearances, and filmmaker awards.

The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival is a proud Academy Award®-qualifying film festival for Short Film Awards. Recipient(s) of the Film Festival’s Golden Reel Award for Narrative/Animated and Documentary Short Films will be eligible to submit in the Animated Short Film/Live-Action Short Film category of the Academy Awards®.

C3: CONFERENCE FOR CREATIVE CONTENT

C3: Conference for Creative Content (C3) is a space for creative communities and industry leaders to converge through panels and conversations. C3 connects industry professionals to create dialogues on the ever-changing media landscapes as we build a collective vision for our creative communities.

PACIFIC CINEWAVES

Pacific Cinewaves is a special program of cinematic works by and about Pacific Islander filmmakers, presenting an astounding scope of artistic expression by Pacific Islander cinema artists, in all its forms — from documentary and narrative, experimental, spoken-word, fantasy, activist cinema, and performing arts, presented as part of Visual Communications’s commitment to amplify Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Communities.

Born from a process of self-reflection and a growing commitment to challenge definitions and boundaries, Pacific Cinewaves was created to uplift and uphold Indigenous storytellers who utilize media to preserve cultural traditions and present diasporic stories, and to support communities engaging against movements of cultural appropriation/appreciation in the guise of diversity and inclusion, particularly in spaces where Asian American artists may hold privilege.

First launched in 2017 in Carson, CA, Pacific Cinewaves was created by Visual Communications, the nation’s premier Asian Pacific American media arts center, FYI Films, an innovative media training program for at-risk youths, and the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, to showcase storytelling from all parts of the Ocean; centering Pasifika perspectives, and as a means to build better allyship between Asian and Native Hawaiiian/Pacific Islander communities.

Pacific Cinewaves has highlighted stories and storytellers emerging from the Kingdom of Hawai’i, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Cook Islands, Tahiti (French Polynesia), Guåhan (Guam), Samoa, and throughout the Pacific region.

Visual Communications recognizes its privilege to create spaces for Asian and Pasifika communities to collide and converge. From the early works of OMAI FAʻATASI: SAMOA MO SAMOA to NA PUA O LAKA, to the current programmatic focus of Pacific Cinewaves, Visual Communications continues to elevate works by and about our Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander communities, and are grateful for the work artists and partners have done and continue to do in these spaces. Visual Communications acknowledges the work of partners such as Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC), led by the late Leanne Ferrer, whose spirit can be felt through the artists she and PIC have cultivated. Their work continues to inspire us.

VISUAL COMMUNICATIONS CONNECT

Visual Communications (VC) CONNECT is an online destination for the hundreds of films and media productions created by Visual Communications. Featured films include some of our VC Classics, as well as films made in the Digital Histories production program for older adults and the Armed With a Camera (AWC) Fellowship for Emerging Artists.

Funding for VC CONNECT has been provided by California Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act economic stabilization plan of 2020.