Halfway Home Asian American Art in the Central Valley

ABOUT

Next Gen Asian American Art (formerly titled Halfway Home: Asian American Fine art in the Central Valley), produced past S. Steve Arounsack, co-produced past CAAM, and executive produced by David Hosley, explores how Asian Americans in California'southward Fundamental Valley are using art to reshape narratives about and within their communities.

Lon La Dee Chan of Stockton, Nikiko Masumoto of Del Rey and Paramjeet Kaur and Harjeet Singh of Yuba Urban center are portrayed creating distinctive art in a region better known for its agricultural productivity. Three of them are immigrants, and in jubilant their communities these vanguards are crafting hybrids halfway betwixt their ancestral cultures and today's California's gimmicky culture.

Projection partners are the Centre for Asian American Media and KVIE Public Television. The program was shot in 4K HD. Funding comes from the California Arts Council and the Corporation for Public Dissemination.

Chan is a recent graduate of CSU Sacramento who creates costumes, including glittering Apsara crowns, for the Khmer Ballet of Stockton, whose choreography is inspired in part by Cambodia's ancient Angkor Wat. He also works in the visual arts, including portraits in pencil and oils. Masumoto is a playwright, actress and social activist who makes her living equally a farmer south of Fresno. She recently brought back 4th generation Japanese Americans who had grown upwardly in the Valley for the Twenty-four hours of Remembrance, which marks the anniversary of the federal order that put more than than 100,000 behind spinous wire during Globe War Two. Kaur and Singh are skilled performers Punjabi dance and song—Bhangra and Giddha—who spend hours each week teaching children and adults the energetic steps and lyrics pop in Sikh communities across America.

California'south Central Valley is the fastest growing region in the state along with the Inland Empire. The Valley, which stretches from Redding to the Tehachapi Mountains, is forecast to grow at a greater per centum than the coastal regions over the next ii decades and the ability of its highly diverse residents to prosper and thrive is critical to California'south economical and social wellbeing.

Contributing to its variety are more a dozen groups of Americans whose ancestors came from regions in Asia, with most families arriving since 1980. As they have come to the Central Valley the new Americans have largely settled in the poorer parts of the cities and towns they now telephone call abode. The largest populations in America of some of these groups, such as Sikhs and Hmong, are in the Valley.

Within these Asian American communities is a reverence for art—visual art, performing fine art, and personal and public expressions of a grouping'south experiences, both in Asia and in America. In each of them, ane finds art being made past seniors and students, by those who speak English equally their second language and those who cannot speak more than than a few words of their grandparents native language.

Together, they are building on the culture of their countries of emigration, simply too reflecting their ain interests and how art is created and experienced in California today.

And this is not a one direction phenomenon. Art created hither is also influencing the arts in Asian countries. In some cases, they are impacting artistic expression in countries where creative liberty has been, and is, repressed. In that location is literally a back and along, with Asian performers coming to California, and our synthesis of old and new being noted and adapted in Asia.

SCREENINGS

May 4, 2019 — S Asian Movie Festival at University of California, Davis International House
Apr 30, 2019 — Race and Power Film Festival at California State University, Stanislaus
Apr 7, 2019 — Festival of the Arts, California State University, Sacramento
May xix — CAAMFest Globe Premiere at the Oakland Asian Cultural Heart at 7pm
May 21 — Community Screening at KVIE, 5:30pm
May 22 — Broadcast Premiere on KVIE at 7pm

BIOS

Executive Producers

David Hosley has four decades of feel in dissemination and higher educational activity, including roles overseeing more than a dozen nationally circulate public television documentaries about the history of communities of color in America. He previously collaborated with the Centre for Asian American Media on This Is My Domicile Now, Changing Season: On The Masumoto Family unit Subcontract, Searching For Asian America and Resettlement To Redress. His most recent public media project was Arnold Knows Me: The Tommy Kono Story as executive producer. It received the top award of the Asian American Journalism Association concluding year in the Telly/Online Video category.

Dr. Hosley is a member of the Silver Circumvolve of the Northern California chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS). He also received the NATAS Lath of Governors Citation for service to the television industry and community. He holds 2 degrees from Stanford in communications and a Ph.D. from Columbia in folklore. His dissertation, which was published by Greenwood Printing, is about Edward R. Murrow and other strange correspondents who reported from Europe leading up to and during Earth War Two.

Dr. Hosley has served as general manager of KQED-TV and KQED-FM, KCSM-Tv/FM/Samnet and KVIE-Tv in California and news director of WRUF-AM in Gainesville and WINZ-AM in Miami. His work in telly production and community outreach has been recognized by the Japanese American Citizens League, Organization of Chinese Americans and Panjabi American Heritage Guild.

Stephen Gongis the Executive Director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). Stephen has been associated with CAAM since its founding in 1980, and has served as Executive Director since 2006. His previous positions in arts administration include: Deputy Director of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Picture Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, Program Officeholder in the Media Arts program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and Associate Managing director of the National Centre for Film and Video Preservation at the American Flick Plant.

He has been a lecturer in the Asian American Studies plan at UC Berkeley, where he developed and taught a course on the history of Asian American media. In addition to writing about film history, Gong has provided critical commentary on several DVD projects including the Treasures From American Archives, Vol 1 & 5 (National Film Preservation Foundation), Chan is Missing (dir. Wayne Wang), and is the featured historian in the documentary Hollywood Chinese (Dir. Arthur Dong).

He is the Board Chair of the Center for Rural Strategies and serves on the Advisory Board of the San Francisco Silent Film Society.

Donald Young is the Center for Asian American Media'southward Managing director of Programs. He oversees CAAM's plan areas, and specifically develops and implements CAAM'southward national productions and national PBS strategies. In public television, Donald has supervised the national broadcasts of over 150 award-winning projects. Equally a producer, he has worked both in documentaries and independent characteristic films. His nearly contempo productions include documentaries on ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro and former Louisiana U.S. Congressman Anh "Joseph" Cao. Donald has also taught pic at the University of California, Davis and the University of Hawaii, Manoa.

Producer

Steve Arounsack came to the The states when he was only four years quondam along with his parents and three siblings. The family unit settled in Maui, Hawaii, and lived at that place for six years before moving Modesto where they have lived for more than two decades.

He was a recipient of the Gates Millennium Scholarship, the first Laotian American to receive it, while pursuing his Ph. D. in Environmental at Academy of California at Davis.

Dr. Arounsack is a faculty member at CSU Stanislaus, where he earned his B.S. and Masters degrees. He likewise directs the Keck Visual Anthropology Lab at the academy, working at the nexus of cultural anthropology and media studies. His volunteer interest with Laotian-American communities includes serving as vice chair of the Southeast Asian Resource Activity Center (SEARAC) and Editor-in-Principal of Lao Vision magazine.

While an undergraduate, he produced a documentary about Southeast Asian traditional music, Rhythm of Elder Treasures, which aired on a number of public television stations. He also hosted the kickoff Lao Film Festival at the First International Briefing on Lao Studies. Concluding year he produced Getting Loa'd almost the rise of popular music and moving-picture show in Laos over the past decade. It was shown this year at the Seattle Asian American Film Festival.

Cinematographer

Tim Walton is a native of Sacramento, California, Tim began his career in cinematography at the immature age of twelve by stuffing firecrackers into plastic models and filming them with his male parent'south 8mm movie camera equally they disintegrated. Since that time, he has lensed productions ranging from contained short and characteristic films to music videos, television shows, commercials, as well as many characteristic documentaries for PBS. Over the grade of his career, Tim has received numerous awards for his work, including an honorable mention at the Dhaka Human Rights Festival in Dhaka, Bangladesh, every bit well as 12 Telly awards, and 3 regional Emmy awards.

The Middle for Asian American Media (CAAM) is a nonprofit organisation dedicated to presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible. CAAM does this past funding, producing, distributing and exhibiting works in moving picture, telly and digital media. For more information on CAAM, please visit world wide web.caamedia.org.