Multiple Columbia Filmmakers Featured in 2021 Asian Pacific Virtual Showcase
Numerous Filmmakers will have their films screened online through May 31, 2021 as part of Visual Communications’ Asian Pacific Virtual Showcase. The films to be screened include Above The Sea, written and directed by Film alumnus Keola Racela '15, Lightning, written and directed by alumna Bianca Catbagan '18 and produced by alumna Marie Jamora '05, and Touch, which was directed by alumnus Andrew Stephen Lee '18, co-written by Lee and fellow alumna Bittnarie Shin '18, and produced by alumna Ursula Ellis '17.
Founded in 1970, Visual Communications is the first non-profit organization in the US dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian Pacific American peoples, communities, and heritage through the media arts. In 1980, the organization premiered the first ever full-length Asian American film, Hito Hata: Raise the Banner, which was co-directed by Duane Kubo and Robert A. Nakamura, who are both among the original founders of Visual Communications.
As part of their programming for Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Visual Communications is hosting the Asian Pacific Virtual Showcase, which aims to highlight Asian American and Pacific Islander artists of different communities and neighborhoods in the United States, Canada, and Oceania. Building a more meaningful and thoughtful consciousness of Asian Pacific histories and experiences in America has been part of Visual Communications’ mission for decades, and the recent racialization of the COVID-19 virus, which has incited acts of hate and violence against the Asian community, only further underscores the importance of the organization's work “to create spaces for expression, engagement, and empowerment.”
You can browse the entire catalog and watch the films for free here.
In Above the Sea (Racela, 2013), a young woman is forced to take extraordinary risks to survive in the dangerous underworld of 1930s Shanghai when her life is threatened by a murderous policeman. In Lightning (Catbagan, 2020), two lovers escape for a weekend to repair a relationship on the brink of ending. Touch (Lee, 2015) follows one fourteen-year-old girl's obsession with the new swimming instructor that launches her into a world of undiscovered feelings as she travels between adolescence and womanhood, leaving childhood forever behind.
Keola Racela studied film and digital media at University of California Santa Cruz before entering the MFA Film Program at Columbia. He has worked as Media Director at Youth Rights Media, a non-profit organization in New Haven, CT dedicated to creating social change through youth-led documentary filmmaking. He also recently directed the comedy-horror Porno (2019).
Bianca Catbagan is a Filipino director and photographer based in Los Angeles. She recently graduated from Columbia with an MFA in Directing & Screenwriting. She is part of an independent film kollective under Indie Pop Films and is developing her first feature film, Magda. Her film Paraluman was nominated for a Golden Egg at the Reykjavík International Film Festival in 2016. Most recently, her film Supermodel won a grant from the Cinematografo International Film Festival and screened to a sold-out audience in San Francisco.
Marie Jamora is a writer-director born and raised in Manila, Philippines. Her film Flip The Record won the Grand Jury Award for "Best Narrative Short" at Urbanworld and her first feature, What Isn't There (Ang Nawawala), premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival. She is the director of both seasons of Family Style, an Asian foodie show with Warner Bros. After graduating from Columbia, she returned to Manila to direct music videos, commercials, and television. Jamora graduated from AFI's Directing Workshop for Women, the Warner Bros. Directors' Workshop, and the Lifetime Director Shadowing Program. She is a part of the Adjunct Directing Faculty at the American Film Institute and has just gotten her television directorial debut with Ava DuVernay’s award-winning Queen Sugar on the OWN Network.
Andrew Stephen Lee was born in 1988 in San Francisco, California. After graduating from Loyola Marymount University, Stephen worked as an assistant to Magnum photographer Jim Goldberg for three years. His Columbia thesis film, Manila is Full of Men Named Boy, premiered in competition at the 75th Venice Film Festival. His previous films include The Sound of Coin Hitting Brass as well as Touch.
Bittnarie Shin was born in the US, raised in South Korea and educated in the UK. She has worked as an independent curator with specialization in installation art and conceptual art before expanding her interest in film. Her curatorial works have been featured in major Korean art galleries including Space*C and Art Sonjae. Touch, which she wrote, was selected by Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, San Francisco International Festival of Short Films, as well as the Los Angeles Film Festival. Her first directorial work Afterglow won Best Short Short during its run at the London Independent Film Festival in 2011.
Ursula Ellis is an LA-based writer/director who received her BA from Northwestern University and an MFA in Film from Columbia. An Army brat with Appalachian roots, she was born in Germany and grew up primarily in Alabama and Oklahoma. She is drawn to regionally set, character-driven stories that explore intersectionality, agency, and memory and experiment with genre in new ways. Her short films have screened at festivals like Fantasia, Denver, Woodstock, Indie Memphis, Mill Valley, Sarasota, and Cucalorus, and have been featured online via Omeleto, NoBudge, Shudder, Directors Notes, Girls in Film, and Film Shortage. Her award-winning MFA thesis, Crick in the Holler, received an Alfred P. Sloan Production Grant.