The Asian American Basis (TAAF) and the Sundance Institute have teamed as much as launch a brand new fellowship and scholarship for Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) artists, as a way to present them with artistic and tactical help to develop their abilities and develop professionally. A press launch introduced the information.
Vera Brunner-Sung and Desdemona Chiang are amongst these chosen for the Fellowship’s inaugural cohort, and can every obtain a $20,000 unrestricted grant to help their particular person tasks in addition to custom-made help from the Institute primarily based on their targets.
Georgia Fu, Jenna Lam, Simi Prasad, and Nicole Solis-Sison are among the many Scholarship recipients. They’ll be capable of enroll in a stay on-line course targeted on their self-discipline of alternative, will obtain a Creator+ Sundance Collab membership, can take part in unique networking and community-building occasions, and can obtain suggestions on their tasks.
Norman Chen, TAAF CEO, mentioned: “TAAF helps construct the infrastructure wanted to extend AAPI illustration and storytelling in order that our communities can really feel a broader sense of belonging on this nation. Investing in and empowering AAPI artists is a strong approach of making certain our tales are seen as a part of the material of American life and tradition. That’s why we’re thrilled to collaborate with the Sundance Institute and our philanthropic companions to help AAPI artists who deserve the sources and alternatives they have to be main storytellers of their fields.”
Bios for the respective Fellowship and Scholarship individuals are as follows, courtesy of Sundance Institute.
The 2022 Asian American Basis Fellowship
Vera Brunner-Sung
Concerning the artist: Vera was born in Michigan to oldsters from Korea and Switzerland. Her movies have been screened at festivals and museums all over the world together with Sundance, Rotterdam, the Whitney Museum, and Ann Arbor Movie Competition.
Challenge: Bitterroot, a movie a couple of Hmong man in Montana who hides the reality about his misplaced job and failed marriage from his mom. However when she immediately falls sick, he should lastly reckon along with his painful previous to save lots of them each.
Desdemona Chiang
Concerning the artist: Desdemona is a nationally famend stage director working in new performs, Shakespeare, and musicals. She is understood for her visceral, no-nonsense method to storytelling, along with her distinct viewpoint as an immigrant and Asian American lady, and a particular curiosity in worldwide and multilingual tales.
Challenge: Made in USA, a TV sequence a couple of Chinese language-American on line casino host who takes within the pregnant teen daughter of her wealthiest shopper after getting handed up for a promotion and unexpectedly fired, and turns her dwelling right into a delivery resort to regain management of her life.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury
Concerning the artist: Misha is a many-tentacled author and director. Misha was awarded a Jonathan Larson Grant for musical theater and collaborated on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. Upcoming: Public Obscenities (Soho Rep & Naatco). Not too long ago: Mukhagni (The Public Theater); Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop); Englandbashi (Ann Arbor Movie Competition).
Challenge: Rheology, a stay concert-memoir-physics-symposium about an artist son learning his physicist mom. She research the unusual conduct of sand. Collectively, they unravel the science—the story—of how issues circulate.
Tadashi Nakamura
Concerning the artist: Tadashi is an Emmy-winning director and was named certainly one of CNN’s Younger Individuals Who Rock for being the youngest filmmaker on the 2008 Sundance Movie Competition and one of many High Rising Asian American Administrators on IMDb. His movies embody Mele Murals, Jake Shimabukuro: Life On 4 Strings, A Tune For Ourselves, and Pilgrimage.
Challenge: Third Act, on its floor, a biopic that explores Robert Nakamura’s life and function because the “Godfather of Asian American movie,” made by his son, Tadashi Nakamura. However with Robert’s analysis of Parkinson’s illness, the movie poses a posh query: how can a father and son say goodbye?
Neo Sora
Concerning the artist: Neo is a Japanese-American filmmaker working in New York and Tokyo. His quick The Hen (2020) premiered at Locarno Worldwide Movie Competition 2020. Filmmaker Journal named Neo one of many 25 New Faces of Unbiased Movie in 2020. In 2022, he participated within the Sundance Screenwriters and Administrators Lab.
Challenge: Earthquake, a function movie targeted on a rabble-rousing teenager dwelling in near-future Tokyo, the place inhabitants await the subsequent huge earthquake, who should resolve between persevering with a lifetime of youthful abandon or shedding certainly one of his greatest pals whose blossoming political consciousness has made him extra distant.
Sean Wang
Concerning the artist: Sean is a filmmaker from Fremont, CA, and a 2020 Sundance Ignite Fellow. Most just lately, his movie, H.A.G.S (Have A Good Summer time), was acquired and launched by the New York Instances. He’s at the moment creating his first function movie, Dìdi (弟弟), which was awarded the SFFILM Rainin Grant.
Challenge: Dìdi (弟弟), a function movie set in Fremont, CA in 2008. Within the final month of summer season earlier than highschool begins, an impressionable thirteen-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his household can’t educate him: the right way to skate, the right way to flirt and the right way to love your mother.
The 2022 Collab Scholarship
Georgia Fu
Concerning the artist: Georgia is a Taiwanese American filmmaker inquisitive about thematics surrounding uncommon factors of connection. Her shorts have been acknowledged at festivals comparable to Slamdance, New Orleans Movie Competition, Hollyshorts, and LAAPFF. She is at the moment creating two options, certainly one of which is an adaptation of a narrative by Edward Yang.
Challenge: Approximate Pleasure, a function movie a couple of younger Taiwanese American teenager who decides to run away along with her highschool historical past instructor to flee her grief from the sudden dying of her father. On the street, she discovers that irrespective of how far you run, you can’t run away from your self.
Leomax (Ziyuan) He
Concerning the artist: Leomax acquired his bachelor’s diploma in Digital Media Arts and is at the moment a Movie Directing MFA candidate at CalArts. He’s an alumnus of Nespresso Abilities 2021 and the Artist-in-Residence program of Artwork Nova 100. He needs to make narratives which have a sober intoxication.
Challenge: Gungnir, a thesis movie set in 2020 Los Angeles, wherein the outbreak of COVID-19 unintentionally coincides with the birthday want of a 9 year-old boy, Leo, who needs to cease a Chinese language-American lady, Charly, whom he crushes on from going again to China. He thinks the pandemic is because of his want and panics on a regular basis as he fears others will be taught his secret.
Jenna Lam
Concerning the artist: Jenna is a Southeast Asian artistic who relishes in enterprise operations and figuring out themes in communities’ tales to transform into artistic tasks.
Challenge: Formidable, an internet sequence starring an impatient, daring Vietnamese-Cambodian-American lady who navigates her new life as a college-dropout regardless of her immigrant mom’s needs and plans for her.
Simi Prasad
Concerning the artist: Simi is at the moment a showrunner’s assistant on a brand new fantasy present for Disney+. Beforehand, she assisted a function literary agent at WME. Simi grew up in London, England, although her American accent implies in any other case. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton College with levels in Psychology and Inventive Writing.
Challenge: Altering of the Guard, which is a couple of legendary world impressed by medieval India. After a dutiful commoner’s aunt is executed for failing to stop the mysterious homicide of the king she was sworn to defend, she takes her place as an elite guard to the brand new authoritarian queen to guard her household from retribution.
Norbert Shieh
Concerning the artist: Norbert is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker and cinematographer whose movies discover the subtleties of the on a regular basis. His work thrives with help from Inventive Capital, CAAM, BAVC, Logan Nonfiction Program, True/False and Visible Communications. In 2019, Filmmaker Journal named him as certainly one of 25 New Faces of Unbiased Movie.
Challenge: Preserves, a feature-length documentary following the lives of those that hold a disappearing agricultural custom alive via intimate moments between work and their quiet home lives. Happening in Taiwan, the movie is a lyrical portrait that explores “desk to farm” for the culinary ingredient, suan cai – a pickled mustard inexperienced.
Nicole Solis-Sison
Concerning the artist: Nicole is a multi-racial author, producer and director. She is a founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, a company that tackles inequities going through immigrants within the media area. She is engaged on a script that explores rejection, acceptance, dying, and therapeutic as a younger refugee.
Challenge: Papeles, a coming of age movie about two younger asylum refugees trying to find the ICE agent that saved them.
