Updated March 28, 2012
Congratulations to documentary filmmaker Arthur Dong. Arthur has also been awarded in March, 2012 a grant from the California Council for the Humanities for his documentary project on the late Cambodian actor Haing Ngor. On December 1, 2011 The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) also awarded him a research and development grant for the same documentary project. Congratulations!
Arthur shared insights into his art of documentary filmmaking with AsianConnections, and details on his latest projects.
Suzanne: Arthur, thank you for sharing with our audience updates on your current projects.
Arthur: I’ve got a few projects working their way up to the front burners.
First, I’ve just been granted exclusive documentary rights to the life story of Dr. Haing S. Ngor, the first-time actor in The Killing Fields who drew upon his four-year interment in Khmer Rouge prison camps to create an Oscar-winning performance. Dr. Ngor is mostly known for his film work, but what I find compelling is his quest to bring worldwide attention to the devastation of Cambodia under the Pol Pot regime.
In Cambodia, he is a folk hero; in America, he’s a role model. Unfortunately, Dr. Ngor was murdered in 1996 in L.A.’s Chinatown. Although the case was officially solved and convicted as a botched robbery, it’s still a mystery to many in the Cambodian community. In fact, in 2009, at the Cambodian tribunals to bring...
Ever since the original Napster.com galvanized people on the issues of illegally sharing copyrighted music over the internet, new companies have sprouted up to solve this problem.
Digital Rights Management
Since 1999, millions of copyrighted songs have been shared illegally on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. In response, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has tried suing the networks out of existence.
Today, the RIAA filed copyright infringement lawsuits against more than 700 illegal file sharers, including individuals at 26 universities. The legal action by the major record companies also named 32 individuals at the schools for using their college networks to distribute illegally copyrighted recordings on unauthorized peer-to-peer services.
The RIAA was successful against Napster, the mother of all P2P networks, which was shut down in 2001. However, the industry has not been successful against the likes of KaZaA and Morpheus, because unlike Napster these networks have no central server, and as a result, these companies have no control over the actions of their users.
Unable to remove these networks through direct litigation, the entertainment industry has taken the controversial tactic of suing the users of the network.
Many of the users of these P2P networks are college students, and for good reason. College students have a ravenous taste for music, new and old, and only a small proportion of students actually have the funds to pay for the music that...
(L-R) Douglas Carter Beane, Lewis Flinn, Liz Mikel, Dan Knechtges, Leslie Blake, David Ives, Kenny Leon, Samuel L. Jackson, Randy Gener, David Henry Hwang, Leigh Silverman and Jennifer Lim attend the 2011 Drama Desk and Fordham University Theatre Program Panel Discussion: Anatomy of a Breakout at Fordham Law School on November 13, 2011 in New York City. (Photo by Lia Chang)
The Drama Desk & Fordham University Theatre Program co-sponsored a lively panel discussion on November 13, 2011, in the Pope Auditorium at Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus in New York. The discussion, titled “Anatomy of a Breakout,” addressed the remarkable trend of breakthrough productions and breakout performances on the New York stage in 2011, was moderated by theater critic Randy Gener and Leslie (Hoban) Blake, the Drama Desk’s Vice President.
Gener assembled an all-star lineup of panelists including actor Jennifer Lim, playwright David Henry Hwang and director Leigh Silverman fromChinglish; Douglas Carter Beane, book writer, Lewis Flinn, composer/lyricist, Liz Mikel, actor, Dan Knechtges, director/choreographer from Lysistrata...
On Monday, November 14, 2011, the Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue Flagship store in New York unveiled the 2011 Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue Christmas Windows.
This year, the windows were inspired by children’s drawings of “What is Christmas Made of?” and an illustration by Carl Wilson from 1941 that shows tiny illustrations and asks “What is Christmas Made of?” Lord & Taylor asked children from Women In Need shelters and local schools to draw what they believe Christmas is made of. The mechanical holiday windows were inspired by their art and feature 125 of the original drawings.
The 2011 Lord & Taylor Fifth Avenue Christmas Windows unveiling was live streamed online and a video of highlights can be viewed atwww.lordandtaylor.com/christmas
The celebration began with performances by the Young People’s Chorus of New York City™ who were joined by Kathie Lee Gifford, co- host of the fourth hour of NBC’s Today Show for one number.
Prior to the unveiling, the Young People’s Chorus of NYC performed “What is Christmas Made Of” a holiday song composed exclusively for Lord & Taylor....
While it appears that acting opportunities are improving for Asian Pacific Americans in Hollywood, it is still a rare sighting to find a handsome, sexy Asian American male in a non-stereotypical role in mainstream television and movies. Unless you are one of the lucky ones cast in the TV series Hawaii Five-0, Asian American male actors are more often cast in roles as thugs, geeks, martial arts experts, or as tourists or characters with a funny foreign accent.
Nareth Chuon and Jason Peers, two young professionals in Los Angeles are on a mission to make a difference.
First, they spent their weekends and nights after their day jobs producing a health and fitness style calendar called the 2010 Asian Pacific Male (APM) Calendar featuring handsome and sexy Asian American men to raise funds for charity, with renowned photographer Jeff Sheng, one of the three original creators with Chuon and Peers. The calendar and the charity fundraising was a hit.
Now, Chuon and Peers want to take their calendar and charity fundraising concept to television. They have just completed filming a reality TV pilot based on their experiences co-producing the calendar project, with hope that the episodes will begin production in Spring, 2012.
Peers said the original project was a success because "people had never seen anything like this before." Before the 2010 Asian Pacific Male Calendar Asian American men were usually photographed on "rafts or holding a bamboo fan," he...