February 15, 2018

San Francisco

Happy Lunar New Year! The Lunar New Year begins Friday, February 16, 2018!

Ben Fong-Torres and Julie Haener co-host Southwest Airlines® Chinese New Year Parade on February 24 in San Francisco beginning at 5:15pm PST. Organizers expect 1.2 million people will be attending in person.

The Parade will be broadcast live on KTVU Fox 2 or KTSF Channel 26 6:00-8:00pm Saturday February 24, 2018 on television! Watch the Parade live from the streets in San Francisco - the largest of its kind outside of Asia! It will weave its way through San Francisco Chinatown and ends at Jackson and Kearny Streets. Here's a report which includes comments on the 60-year parade tradition from Ben Fong-Torres on NBCNews.com. 

Named one of the top ten Parades in the world by International Festivals & Events Association, this is truly a sight to see.

The parade began in San Francisco more than one hundred years ago, and is one of the few remaining night illuminated parades in North America.

This year the Southwest Airlines® 2018 Chinese New Year festivities range from the great Chinese New Year parade, to street fairs, a fashion show, and many other events beginning February 10 and run through the month of February and into early March. Bobo the parrot says Gung Hay Fat Choy!

March 26, 2018

San Francisco

In a world in desparate need of heroes - we have a real life one.

Decades before 'Diversity" and "Inclusion" became fashionable terms, Justice Harry W. Low was already at the forefront making positive change in our world. 

This month Justice Low celebrates his birthday and is as busy as ever arbitrating cases all over the country. 

My colleague ABC7 KGO TV's David Louie and I, a former KRON TV - NBC reporter Suzanne Joe (Kai), co-hosted this video celebrating Justice Low's extraordinary career and service to our community.

While researching for a film project, I visited the archives at UC Berkeley.

The head archivist said there is a resurgence of young people searching for their identities.

I saw them going through old, fragile, dusty newspaper clippings of the 60s and 70s to learn about the revolution when youth stood up to save our world.  

On one of the newspaper's front page was Justice Harry W. Low.  

Let's celebrate and honor our living heroes now.

This video was originally produced and edited by Steven Joe for Asian, Inc.'s Lifetime Achievement Award honoring Justice Low.

Click here to our Happy Birthday video honoring Justice Harry W. Low!

Or this link to the video:

https://youtu.be/wQRR_p_jzms

April 26, 2018

Newport Beach

The 2018 Newport Beach Film Festival (April 26 - May 3) features great movies and some of the best galas on the planet - with more than 350 films to showcase this year - there is alot to party about!

Here are just a few highlights of this huge festival with a wide range of galas, seminars, and screenings from documentaries to narrative features. Check out the 240 page 2018 NBFF Flipbook. View the schedule for films from Action Sports, Dramas, Culinary, to Irish, European, Latino Showcases. The Pacific Rim Showcase features films from Australia, China, Korea, Japan, and the Philippines.

For the full schedule click here.

Ramen Heads

April 30, 2018 5:15pm

Triangle Cinemas- 1870 Harbor Boulevard 
Costa Mesa, CA 92627 United States 

Osamu Tomita, Japan's reigning king of ramen takes us deep into his world, revealing every single step of his obsessived approach to creating the perfect soup and noodles, and his relentless search for the highest quality ingredients. Five other noodle shops are highlighted in this film directed by Koki Shigeno.

Filipino Spotlight – ULAM: Main Dish 
Lido Theater, 3459 Via Lido 
Newport Beach, CA 92663 

May 1, 2018

Mark your calendars now!  

Five must-see documentary films are screening on WORLD CHANNEL's America ReFramed. They will be available after their broadcasts for online streaming (see dates below).

Award-winning series co-creator Liz Cheng and her team have curated this stellar slate of films for May's AAPI Heritage Month. Cheng is WGBH's General Manager for Television which reaches local and national viewers, including series Local, USA, Doc World, and Stories from the Stage for WORLD Channel which reaches 152 stations in markets representing 63% of U.S. television households. 

These are worthy of organizing your own screening parties. Screening schedule:

UNBROKEN GLASS 

May 1, 2018 - Encore Broadcast on WORLD CHANNEL's America ReFramed at 8pm EST (East), and 9pm PST (West) 

May 1 to May 15, 2020 - Online Streaming 

June 8, 2018

Its been a tough week. First Kate Spade. Then this morning the news of Anthony Bourdain. 

I never knew them personally, but they touched my life and so many of my friends. There was something about our Kate Spade handbags that made us smile, and we watched Anthony Bourdain travel the world sharing his adventures in culture and cuisine. 

Of the many tributes and articles, here is one by writer/filmmaker Kevin Pang, who met Anthony Bourdain several times. (for links to work, click to the main article) Click here to his article "What Anthony Bourdain gave us, and what he left us." 

Another notable article "Preventable Tragedies" written by The New Yorker writer Andrew Soloman discusses the factors that may be contributing to our naton's increased suicide rate.

Soloman writes in his article,"we feel both our own anguish and the world's. There is a dearth of emphathy, even of kindness, in the national conversation, and those deficits turn ordinary neurosis into actionable despair." 

Two important new documentaries on suicide are "The S Word" https://theswordmovie.com and the soon to be released "Do No Harm." "The S Word" is directed by Lisa Klein, and produced by Doug Blush who was also Supervising Editor. Filmmaker Robyn Symon, director of the soon to be relesed documentary Do No Harm DoNoHarmFilm.com about the suicide rate of doctors writes: