Asian American Talent Shines at Kollaboration 11

By Amy Lieu

With every strum of the guitar, tap of the drum, tune of melody, and dance to the beat, song and dance performances were engrossed with emotion, energy, and passion.The annual Asian American talent show competition, Kollaboration 11, presented its eleventh year and season finale at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live November 5, 2011. The flagship show in Los Angeles was its last stop after touring for 15 shows across 12 other cities in the United States. Its motto: empowerment through entertainment.

Many notable Asian Americans graced the pre-show red carpet including actress Bai Ling (“The Crow” and “Lost),” and journalist Lisa Ling, host of “Our America” on the Oprah Winfrey Network.

With the underrepresentation of Asian Americans in U.S. entertainment, Kollaboration gives popular and up-and-coming artists a stage to showcase their talents. The competition show aims to inspire and empower young Asian Americans to pursue their dreams in entertainment, a career path that some of the artists have said has not always been encouraged by their parents. 

Lights dimmed and curtains opened as former contestant Ensemble Memo from Kollaboration Acoustic 5 (the acoustic version of the talent show earlier this year) opened the night’s performances. Special guest performer and popular YouTube singer Clara C serenaded the audience with her sweet voice, tambourine, guitar, and accordion.

Eight talented...

Record Number of Asian American Feature Films Will Include L.A. Premieres of Ham Tran's "Journey From the Fall" and Eric Byler's "AMERICANese" to Bookend Eight Day Festival

The 22nd edition of VC FILMFEST: The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival presented by Honda will feature a record number of feature films from Asian American filmmakers during its eight-day film fest beginning May 4 - May 11 in Los Angeles. Visual Communications (VC), the nations pioneering premiere Asian American media arts resource and education center will present over 140 films, shorts and videos with an unprecedented 16 feature films from 18 Asian American artists.

"This is truly an historic number of feature films from our own artists," states VC executive director, Leslie Ito. "This years showcase of Asian American films underscores the fact that these filmmakers are not waiting for Hollywood to call and are doing it on their own. With Ang Lee being the first non-white director to win the Oscar for Best Director, we are hopeful that these emerging storytellers will also become future contenders. For VC, these artists and their stories illustrate the strength that our organization has in terms of developing, shaping and supporting their works."

The opening, centerpiece and closing night films of this years festival are from three Asian American filmmakers whose careers got their start with short films showcased at previous VC FILMFESTs. This year, the Festival is proud to present the Los...

Little Tokyo - Los Angeles

March 23, 2013

More than 200 people attended a summit yesterday in Los Angeles, provocatively titled "Beyond the Bad and the Ugly." The meeting was appropriately named as it took aim at the continued use of offensive images, ethnic slurs and stereotypical caricatures of Asian Americans in American media, and its impact on just about every aspect of American culture, politics, education and society.

AsianConnections.com applauds Jeff Yang, Wall Street Journal Online writer of the "Tao Jones" column for organizing this first summit devoted to the problem, and enlisting public dialogue and empowerment. Yang brought together activisits, bloggers and others to examine the issues and encouraged people to take action against the negative stereotypes and portrayals of Asian Americans in the media. 

Stereotypical images of Asian Americans in the media have negatively impacted the lives of Asian Americans for more than a century.

Yang told LA Times writer Anh Do the event is "the culmination of a dream, seeing people not only talking about these issues - but doing something about it," "The point is to empower everyone, telling them, "Change is happening, and it's happening inside - with us." 

The March 23, 2013 summit officially kicks off Jeff Yang's new book he co-edited with Parry Shen, Keith Chow and Jerry Ma, Shattered: the Asian American Comics Anthology (Secret Identities). SHATTERED’s 2013 tour, will take Yang and his...

Newport Beach Film Festival Goers Pack Screening of Director Ham Tran's Journey From the Fall

Newport Beach, CA

The big "OC" is rocking with movie premieres, filmmaker receptions and after-parties. The Newport Beach Film Festival is in full swing with day two of an eleven day festival showcasing more than 350 films from nearly 40 countries.

Orange County film festival goers packed the screening tonight of Journey from the Fall (Vuot Song) www.journeyfromthefall.com which also captured the hearts and minds of audiences at the Sundance Film Festival. If you missed tonight's screening, the Newport Beach Film Festival has a second showing on Sunday at 1pm (check official website for listing http://www.newportbeachfilmfest.com/). And if you can't get a ticket to Sunday's screening, Tran's film is also scheduled to be the opening night film at Visual Communications VC Film Fest 2006 - The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival May 4 - 11.

Journey from the Fall's director Ham Tran told AsianConnections he is very excited about the huge turn-out tonight in OC to screen his film. He didn't know his film would have the same popular response as it received at Sundance, but OC ticket holders were waiting two hours before the film opened just to get a good seat. At Sundance his film was so popular that it was officially screened four times to sold-out audiences, with even more screenings added to the schedule.

Stay tuned as AsianConnections provides more coverage of the Newport Beach...

Revv up for the American feature film debut of Pop superstar Rain in Speed Racer

Revv up for the American feature film debut of Pop superstar Rain in Speed Racer which opens in theatres and IMAX on Friday, May 9. Rain portrays Taejo Togokahn, a rival driver of Speed Racer played by Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild ). Christina Ricci (The Opposite of Sex ) is Speed's girlfriend Trixie; John Goodman (The Big Lebowski ) and Oscar winner Susan Sarandon (Dead Man Walking ) are Pops Racer and Mom Racer; Matthew Fox (TV's Lost ) is Racer X; Roger Allam (The Queen , V for Vendetta ) is Royalton; Paulie Litt (TV's Hope & Faith ) is Spritle; Benno Frmann (The Mutant Chronicles ) is Inspector Detector; Hiroyuki Sanada (The Last Samurai ) as Mr. Musha; Richard Roundtree (TV's Heroes , Shaft ) is Ben Burns; and Kick Gurry (Daltry Calhoun ) is Sparky.

The live-action Speed Racer is based on the classic series created by anime pioneer Tatsui Yoshida and showcases the kind of revolutionary visual effects and cutting-edge storytelling that have become benchmarks of the Wachowski brothers' films.

"Speed Racer" is a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures, of a Silver Pictures Production, in association with Anarchos Productions.

www.speedracerthemovie.com