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WHAT'S NEW 2002 2001
2000 SPECIAL FEATURES
SECTIONS
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LATEST NEWS FOR OCTOBER 2002
Our invitation is extended to discover various Asian American leaders listed below, information on our past victories and the many great things that are presently happening in our communities.
For additional and specific information on the subjects listed here, please Discover the latest events in the following categories NATIONAL NEWS
MARKETING NEWS
COMMUNITY NEWS MUSIC EVENTS
FILM/TV INFO
THEATER EVENTS INTERVIEWS AND REVIEWS FEATURED ARTISTS YOUR MUSICAL INPUT IS NEEDED as we seek identify the best songs from our music artists. Click HERE to have your opinion heard on the following music groups:
Click HERE on your views if people would come to a Hollywood night club showcasing prominent Asian Pacific American music artists.
FEATURED ARTISTS & LEADERS She is the CEO and founder of DFreedomZone Inc. based in San Francisco specializing in providing real-time 3D visualization software and interesting 3D content for the World Wide Web. Ellen Poon obtained her undergraduate degree in Computer Science from the University of Essex in England. She continued her Ph.D. studies at University of London and subsequently published two books on her reserach in Theoretical Computer Science. Ellen was the head of the 3D Department at Rushes Post Production in London - a subsidiary of Virgin Enterprises. She also spent four years as Senior Computer Animator and Software Designer at Carlton Communications' Moving Picture Company in London. Rushes and the MPC are two of the best-known and most prolific commercial and television post-production companies in Europe. Starting in 1990, as a top visual effects supervisor with the illustrious George Lucas’ ILM (Industrial Light and Magic) Visual Effects team, she has worked with the highly acclaimed Chinese director Zhang Yimou and ground-breaking films (i.e. Jurassic Park, The Mask, Disclosure, Jumanji, and Perrier's Toy Soldier spot.) Ms. Poon brings to her projects a unique combination of inspiration, meticulous technical expertise and fiscal acumen enhanced by a refined creative aesthetic. She has a reputation of working closely with directors in helping them bring their ideas to life. Her forte is creature animation or character animation films. Ms. Poon has served as a visiting lecturer at various prestigious universities throughout the world such as Royal College of Art, Middlesex University and Westminster University. She has co-authored "Programming with Standard ML" and "Programming with Miranda." As a co-founder of DFreedomZone, she states that her San Francisco-based company produces engaging 3D animation for the entertainment and advertising industries. DFZ's unique 3D graphics rendering technology creates dynamic online and multimedia experiences designed to reach and influence teen and college-aged consumers. By combining the company's real-time 3D visualization software with its production experience, DFZ offers a unique combination of inspiration, meticulous technical expertise and fiscal acumen enhanced by a refined creative aesthetic. Doug grew up in a rural city in Taiwan. When his parents moved to Michigan in the United States, he had difficulty assimilating into the new culture and found drawing to be a safe haven and outlet to express himself without talking. As a result, he found that he had a gift of drawing. Doug Chiang studied film at the University of California, at Los Angeles, and industrial design at the Center of Creative Studies, College of Art and Design. His first professional experience was working for a company called Digital Productions where he was hired to design and direct computer generated TV commercials and flying logos. His first assignment was designing the opening title logo for the premiere of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Chiang then worked as a Stop Motion key animator on the Pee Wee's Playhouse television series. He soon rose to become a Clio Award winning commercial director and designer for Rhythm and Hues, Digital Productions, and Robert Abel and Associates. He won a Clio Award for his work on a Malaysian Airlines ad in 1994. In 1989, Chiang joined Industrial, Light, and Magic as a Visual Effects Art Director and became the Creative Director in 1993. During this time, he worked as Visual Effects Art Director for films including Ghost, Back to the Future II, The Doors, Terminator 2, Death Becomes Her (won an Academy Award), Forrest Gump, Jumanji, and The Mask. He has earned both an Academy Award and a British Academy Award for Death Becomes Her and another British Academy Award for Forrest Gump. As an independent film director, Chiang has received numerous awards, including First Place in the FOCUS Awards for his film Mental Block. Chiang's personal paintings have appeared nationwide in various publications as well as limited edition prints and posters. In 1995 Chiang left ILM to head up the Art Department as Design Director (Director of Concept Design) for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, Episode II, Matrix 3 and his personal film / book project Robota that he started in 1993. Robota initially started as a project to teach myself painting and design. During free weekends and nights, Doug would work on combining his two interests in art - nature and technology - in order to push his skills. Doug loved to explore the interrelationship between nature and technology, especially since he perceives this as complimentary elements. While exploring this relationship with art, the Robota story began to unfold. Doug describes the above-mentioned "film book" as simply an art book story told in a film-like manner. This allows him to utilize the ability of the quality of “books” that allows the viewer to delve into the thoughts and motives of the main characters in ways film can’t. While incorporating the strengths of “films” to present drama in a linear time specific format that allows for a very controlled storytelling. The other added element is the Internet medium to produce something different. In 2001, he joined the Earth and Beyond™ Online team as a consultant and will be providing concept art for all of the player space ships in the game. Earth and Beyond Online is Westwood’s first massively-multiplayer online role-playing game set in a persistent galaxy. The game is set in the future, when star travel is in its earliest stages, and humans are just starting to breach the boundaries of the solar system. Artists and designers such as Robert Bateman, Syd Mead, Ron Cobbs, Ralph McQuarrie, Howard Terpning, Hugh Ferris among other people’s works have influenced him.
Tak Fujimoto is an award-winning Japanese-American director of photography who is considered one of the most talented camera operators in Hollywood and a fan of the "less-is-more" school of filmmaking. Tak is perhaps best known for his work with filmmaker Jonathan Demme through films such as Philadelphia, Silence of the Lambs, Married to the Mob, Something Wild, Swing Shift, Last Embrace and Caged Heat. His rise to the top was a long one. A graduate of the prestigious London Film School, Fujimoto first worked as an assistant to Haskell Wexler on television projects and then with Jonathan Demme on several B-pictures. He made his debut as full cinematographer on Badlands (1973). His other credits include The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Philadelphia (1993), and The Sixth Sense (1999), for which he won the American Society of Cinematographers award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases. He has also worked with such well-known directors as Terrence Malick, Jonathan Kaplan, John Hughes and George Armitage, with credits including Night and the City, Gladiator, Miami Blues, Sweet Hearts Dance, Cocoon: The Return, Pretty in Pink, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Heart Like a Wheel, Death Race 2000 and Badlands.
JUDY MITOMA Judy Mitoma is the Director of World Festival of Sacred Arts, Director of the UCLA Center for Intercultural Performance and a Professor of Dance at UCLA in the Department of World Arts & Cultures. A Dance Ethnologist and dancer by training, her areas of specialization are Java and Bali in Indonesia, and Japan. She served as Chair of World Arts & Cultures from 1982-1997, establishing full departmental status for the program in 1995. She worked on the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival and served as a co-curator of the 1990 Los Angeles festival with Peter Sellars. Independently directing several Asian Performing Arts Summer Institutes (APASI) in 1977, 1979, 1981, 1984 and 1988she has brought many artists from Asia to the UCLA campus. In 1991, Judy was a Warren Weaver Fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation, conducting research in the arts of West Africa. In 1995, she established the Center for Intercultural Performance (CIP) to support research, creative experimentation, documentation, and public outreach for the UCLA campus. Under her leadership - UCLA/CIP has launched three major initiatives: The Asia Pacific Performing Arts Exchange Program (APPEX) funded by The Ford Foundation, The UCLA National Dance/Media Project funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, and a Humanities Residency Fellowship program with the Rockefeller Foundation. Mitoma is a consultant to the New England Foundation for the Arts, Asia Society, and is actively involved in the Los Angeles arts community. In the fall of 1999, she successfully implemented the World Festival of Sacred Music - the Americas, 85 events throughout the city of Los Angeles as a gesture for peace and universal responsibility for the next millennium. Currently, Mitoma is compiling a Festival CD and DVD and serves as the editor-in-chief for a publication/DVD entitled "Envisioning Dance on Film and Video." She is Editor in Chief of a publication/DVD "Envisioning Dance on Film and Video," which will be published in fall 2002 by Routledge. M.A. and B.A., University of California, Los Angeles. Mitoma is known as a person who walks softly and carries a big grant. The soft part describes her philosophy of human interconnectedness and her ability to articulate it in melodious and dedicated tones. The grant part is simple, she explains. "It's hard work, just very hard work--there's no smoke and mirrors." |
OUR GOALS
The purpose of this section is the following: APA & MEDIA NEWS
PASSING OF PATSY MINK
She was the first Asian-American woman (and of color) elected to the U.S. Congress (House of Representatives). This Democrat accomplished this as a member of the House for 24 years over two different stretches.
PASSING OF YUJI ICHIOKA
He was an internationally renowned historian and Asian American Studies pioneer was born on June 23, 1936 in San Francisco. As the result of suffering through the infamous Internment camps, he dedicated his life to social justice.
He created the term “Asian American” in the late 1960’s and was a key founder of UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center. He was a writer of various books and winner of various awards
WILLIAM H. (MO) MARUMOTO APPOINTMENT
Marumoto, originally from Orange County, California, is founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of The Interface Group, Ltd., a boutique executive search firm headquartered in Washington, DC.
Previously, he served for three years as Special Assistant to President Richard M. Nixon from 1970 to 1973. He was the first Asian Pacific American to serve on the executive level of the White House.
ASIAN AMERICAN INCOME GROWTH FIGURES
The increased income brings Asian Americans nearly to the same earning level of whites. Asian Americans earned 97 cents on the dollar compared with whites, according to the study. The median household incomes in 1999 were $53,051 for whites and $51,273 for Asian Americans.
STORIES OF HMONG TEENAGER SUICIDES
APA 1ST WEEKEND CLUB NEWS
APA’S ON TV IN SEPTEMBER
CANADIAN APA’S NOT SEEN
Report notes that just 12 percent of the 1200 characters featured in the sample were visible minorities, an incidence roughly comparable to their incidence in the general population, according to Statistics Canada figures (13.6%).
Aboriginal characters were almost totally absent. Visible minority speaking parts averaged just three or four minutes per dramatic hour with nine out of 10 such characters speaking English without an accent.
Racial diversity is presented almost exclusively as an urban phenomenon.
LODESTONE’S “FREAK STORM”
Cast includes Ray Ordona, Esperanza, Ray Chang and others.
BOLLYWOOD’S “THE FIRE & THE RAIN”
Sajnani proves to be a born screen storyteller in his ambitious and directorial debut. He makes dramatic use of the majestic ruins of Hampi, the capital city of the 13th century Vijaynagar Empire, and deftly but sparingly integrates music and dance sequences into the plot.
RICK YUNE & LISA LING’S ASIAN MUSIC TOUR
ASIAN MASSIVE TOUR
The Asian Massive represents the meeting place where modern urban culture weaves seamlessly with ancient south Asian traditions.
The event featured the following artists:
BOND’S NEW C.D. “SHINE”
ASIAN INVASION AT THE LAUGH FACTORY
This is one of the few major comedy club that has provided an outlet for APA comics to be viewed by the general public and a show designed to meet the needs of APA audiences.
MARGARET CHO INTERVIEW
MEG LEE CHIN MUSIC REVIEW
Far from the industrial music stereotype of being relentlessly atonal or monochromatic, her sound incorporated hip-hop rhythms, crunchy dub reggae, herky-jerky soul, thrashy R&B and hypnotic blues.
ASIAN AMERICAN JAZZ FESTIVAL
Featured artists include Malachi Favors Maghostut, Cornetist Bobby Bradford, William Roper, Robbie Kwock, Melecio Magdaluyo, Francis Wong, Miya Masaoka, Jimmy Biala & Search Five, Al Robles, Rudy Tenio, Tatsu Aoki, Jeff Chan, Jon Jang, Avotcja Jiltonilro, Destiny Muhammad, Tarika Lewis,
JOHN CLEESE IS LUCY LIU’S FATHER?
John Cleese’s scenes were originally written for a woman who would play her mother. Lucy is a big fan of John and personally asked for him.
Cast also includes John Forsythe, Luke Wilson, Matt Le Blanc, Demi Moore, Robert Patrick, Bernie Mac, and Crispin Glover.
QUENTIN PAYS HOMAGE
As a result, he’s gone to great lengths to achieve his goal in every element (i.e. fight scenes, locations, film techniques, directing “The Chinese Way,” Yuen Wo-ping as the fight choreographer, Sonny Chiba as combat coach, etc.) of this film.
Cast includes Daryl Hannah, Lucy Liu, Vivica Fox, Sonny Chiba, Uma Thurman, Hu Xiaokui, etc.
1ST APA ON “SURVIVOR”
Shii Ann Huang was an English major who graduated with honors in 1996 who presently works as an executive recruiter for a technology company in Manhattan. She has a master's degree in interactive media from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
DISNEY DOES MARTIAL ARTS
Yuen is already having helmed some 27 pictures there including recent Dimension import chopsocky "Iron Monkey" (originally released in 1993). He is credited for discovering Michelle Yeoh, Jet Li and Jackie Chan.
HAWAII MAKE PRIMETIME WAVES
Paramount Network TV said that it plans a new Hawaii-set series called 808 (the area code for the state) from writer-director Simon West (Con Air, Tomb Raider).
DAVID HENRY HWANG’S “FDS”
'''Flower Drum Song' (which opened on September 23, 2002) was the first and only Broadway musical about Asian Americans, starring Asian Americans. Hwang's other musicals include "M. Butterfly", a deconstruction of Giacomo Puccini's opera "Madame Butterfly", and "Golden Child", an account of his own family history.
Hwang doesn't feel obliged to portray Asians in a positive light. "When my parents came to this country in the 1950's, the images of Asians were of a poor and uneducated people; Chinese then might have thought their problems would be solved if only people would instead think of us as wealthy and educated. Obviously, the latter image has now taken precedence, but only evolved into yet another stereotype."
"Flower Drum Song" will be the first Broadway musical with an all-Asian cast since Stephen Sondheim's "Pacific Overtures" in 1976 and first Broadway musical with Asian lead characters since "Miss Saigon" in 1991.
CHINESE FASHION DOLL
OCA AND LEAP’S 9/11 MEMORIAL STATEMENTS
HAYAO MIYAZAKI’S “SPIRITED AWAY”
Miyazaki reasserts the power of drawn animation to create fantasies, offering an alternate reality that is refreshingly free of overarticulated details of 3D computer graphics.
Since 1985, he’s (along with Isao Takahata) has created a string of critical and box office successes in Japan: "Castle in the Sky" (1986), "My Neighbor Totoro" (1988), "Kiki's Delivery Service" (1989), "Porco Rosso: The Crimson Pig" (1992), "Princess Mononoke" (1997) and "Spirited Away" (2001).
“Spirited Away” was a blockbuster in Japan, earning more than $234 million in a country with less than half the population and a fraction of the screens of the U.S. and dethroning "Titanic" as the highest-grossing film in Japanese box office history.
ERIC SIMONSON AND PHILIP KAN GOTANDA
Equally at home on both stage and screen, the multitalented Simonson received a Tony Award nomination for his direction of the Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of The Song of Jacob Zulu, and Academy Award and Emmy Award nominations for the HBO film, On Tiptoe.
The Wind Cries Mary begins performances on October 19 and continues through November 17.
Over his career, Gotanda has created one of the largest and most varied bodies of Asian American- themed work with such plays as Fish Head Soup, Yankee Dawg You Die, The Wash, floating weeds and Yohen.
FILMS OF TAKESHI KITANO
This 55-year-old former stand-up comedian’s Dolls tells three intertwined stories about love and fate
involving a young couple bound by a thick red cord, an aging yakuza boss and the girl he left behind, and a disfigured pop star and her devoted fan.
The stone-faced actor got his start as a comedian known as "Beat" Takeshi who eventually shifted toward more serious roles and directing. A horrendous moped accident in 1994 partially paralyzed Kitano's face and seemed to inspire him to make even more introspective and serious movies.
2G’s CONCERT OF EXCELLENCE
This year's Rémy X.O Excellence honors Academy Award nominated director Zhang Yi Mou (Raise the Red Lantern, the new film Hero starring Jet Li), Hollywood leading man Jason Scott Lee (Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, The Jungle Book) and Tony-award winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly, Flower Drum Song)
“RAISING OUR VOICES”
DR. BIN HAN & YIN QINGQIANG
Dr. Bin Han was arrested at his home on May 18, 2002, after being fired by the University of California at Davis on May 13th. Dr. Han, a postgraduate researcher, began working for U.C. Davis in 1989 and was
a member of University Professional and Technical Employees.
He was initially charged with 3 felony counts: (1) theft of trade secrets, (2) possession of stolen property, and (3) embezzlement. Dr. Han pleaded not guilty to all three charges. Jury trial began on August 13th and the jury acquitted him on August 19th.
Authorities allege that Yin, 38, a former postdoctoral research associate at Cornell, stole bacteria and yeast cultures for making an enzyme known as phytase, a livestock feed supplement that scientists think will improve livestock nutrition and reduce phosphorous excretion in animal waste.
Yin Qingqiang is charged with conspiring to transport stolen property in foreign commerce and conspiring to bring biological substances onto a commercial airline. If convicted, he could face up to five years in
prison and a $250,000 fine on each charge.
PATRIOT ACT THREATENS APA’S
API Legal Outreach attorneys (Victor Hwang and Ivy Lee) states that “As a community that has been historically branded as perpetual and unassimilable foreigners, we Asian Americans need to critically question the motivation, necessity and reach of hastily passed legislation designed to target those suspected of "domesticterrorism."
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/asianamericanartistry/message/724
JACKIE CHAN INTERVIEW
ELAINE CHAO INCREASE APA’S IN GOVT.
ASIAN WORKERS FLEX THEIR UNION MUSCLES
About 12% of Asian American workers belong to unions nationwide, a figure that has remained fairly steady in the last decade. Overall, 13.5% of American workers belong to unions, down from about 20% in the early 1980s, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor.
KOREAN LANGUAGE MANDATED IN VOTING INFO
New York remains the only state on the East Coast to require language assistance in any Asian language.
CALIFORNIA’S ETHNIC MEDIA’S EFFECTIVENESS
The study also showed that about 40% of ethnic consumers polled said they generally pay more attention to advertisements in the ethnic media than in the general market media.
GREEN BERETS HELP MONTAGNARDS
TOBACCO CO.’S MARKETING TO APA’S
The core features of tobacco company strategies included emphasis on ''Asian-owned stores, direct marketing of specific cigarette brands through community cultural events, youth orientated promotions, and corporate sponsorship'' drivin by the rapid growth of Asian and Pacific Islander populations.
RJ Reynolds has sponsored events by the National Association of Asian American Journalists and the Organization of Chinese Americans. Phillip Morris, the world's biggest tobacco company, sponsored events such as the Nisei Week Japanese Festival in Los Angeles.
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