The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival announces its award winners online at www.asianfilmfestla.org

ASIAN AMERICAN STARS ATTEND THE 2010 LA ASIAN PACIFIC FILM FESTIVAL CLOSING NIGHT MAY 6, 2010

The Closing Night event of the 2010 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival featured Hong Kong action film, Bodyguards And Assassins starring Tony Leung, Donnie Yen and Cung Le. Mixed Martial Artist-Actor Cung Le introduced the film.

Click here for more information on the film
Bodyguards and Assassins

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Visual Communications, the organizer of the 26th Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival.

The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival presents a critical and award-winning showcase of film and video works by Asian and Asian American filmmakers for all fans of cinema. It is the nation's premiere festival of its kind and is firmly supported by Asian and Asian American filmmakers, actors and the various diverse communities.

Aratani Japan America Theatre
244 S. San Pedro St., (Between 2nd St. & 3rd St.), Little Tokyo, Downtown LA

Hollywood's Asian American actors came out to support the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival.

ATTENDING THE CLOSING NIGHT EVENT:

Cung Le (Mixed Martial Artist; Actor - BODYGUARDS & ASSASSINS),
Tamlyn Tomita (Actress - The Mikado Project, Heroes, Eureka),
Archie Kao (Actor - CSI, PEOPLE I SLEPT WITH),
Karin Anna Cheung (Actress - PEOPLE I SLEPT WITH, BETTER LUCK TOMORROW),

Wo Ai Ni Mommy, Mochi, Miss Kicki, The Prodigy and 9500 Park are among the 2010 Asian American International Film Festival Award Winners

As the 33rd Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF10) came to a close on Wednesday, July 21 at the Chelseas Clearview Cinemas in New York City, actors Louis Ozawa Changchien and Karin Anna Cheung presented awards to five lucky filmmakers before the festivals Closing Night screening of Quentin Lees The People Ive Slept With.

Adam Lee, director of the short film The Prodigy, received The One To Watch Award, which recognizes filmmakers under the age of 21 who demonstrate promise and talent in the discipline of filmmaking. Lees short film follows the painstaking process of a piano prodigy as she strives to further perfect her art.

Taiwanese director Chung Lee won the Excellence in Short Filmmaking Award, which was accepted on his behalf by his wife Annie Hsu. Lees short film Mochi explores the tangled and complex relationship between Yulia, a live-in caretaker, and her antagonizing employer, a bitter old man whose offensive behavior alienates himself from his only son.

The award for Best Emerging Director in Documentary Feature went to Stephanie Wang-Breal for Wo Ai Ni Mommy, a documentary that follows a young Chinese girls transition from China to her adoptive home in Long Island, New York.

Cinematographer Larry Fong chatted with Suzanne Joe Kai just as SUPER 8 was making its opening weekend debut in theaters nationwide claiming the #1 spot at the box office.  SUPER 8 is directed by J.J. Abrams and produced by Steven Speilberg.

Larry Fong began his career shooting hundreds of commercials and award-winning music videos. Beginning in junior high school, he taught himself still photography, cel and stop motion animation, and filmmaking using a Super 8 camera. He graduated from UCLA with a B.A. in Linguistics, and specilized in film and photography at the Art Center of Design in Pasadena.

His music videos for R.E.M., Van Halen, and Goo Goo Dolls earned him three MTV Video Music Awards for Video of the Year. He went on to film two independent films and TV projects, including the pilot for the LOST television series, which earned him an ASC award nomination.

In 2007, his first major studio film "300" was released, directed by fellow Art Center of Design classmate Zack Snyder. in 2009, he was the Director of Photography for "Watchmen" and in 2011 for "Sucker Punch" also directed by Zack Snyder, and "SUPER 8" directed by childhood friend J.J. Abrams, and producer Steven Spielberg.

The photograph in this article of Larry Fong on the set of SUPER 8 holding a special light surrounded by smoke machines is by photographer Francois Duhamel.

Christmas came early for me this year, in the form of R.A. Shiomi’s award-winning play Yellow Fever, when I played the lead, Japanese-Canadian gumshoe, Sam Shikaze, in an all-female cast reading of the play at the home of Julie Azuma and Tamio Spiegel on December 5, 2011.

Playwright and co-director Rick Shiomi, Cindy Cheung, Susan Dalton Quinn, Amanda Galang, Ako, Katie Lee Hill, Lia Chang, Gyu Jin Lim and co-director Raul Aranas.

The reading was co-directed by playwright Rick Shiomi and actor/director Raul Aranas, who helmed Pan Asian Repertory Theatre’s critically acclaimed Off-Broadway production in 1982. It was an exhilarating and historic evening to be performing in my favorite play with my longtime colleagues Cindy Cheung (Captain Kadota) and Ako (Rosie); in addition to Susan Dalton Quinn (Sergeant Mackenzie), Katie Lee Hill (Nancy Wing), Gyu Jin Lim (Chuck Chan) and Amanda Galang (Superintendent Jameson, Goldberg).

Rick Shiomi, Julie Azuma and Tamio Spiegel Photo by Lia Chang

In the house to support- Reme Grefalda, curator of ASIAN PACIFIC AMERICAN PERFORMING ARTS COLLECTION housed in the Library of Congress Asian Division’s Asian American Pacific Islander Collection; actors BD Wong, Gordana Rashovich, Jarlath Conroy and Karen Tsen Lee; Heading East lyricist and librettist Robert Lee, novelist Ed Lin, photographer Brianne Michelle Planko; and Mina Manalac.

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