explorASIAN 2017

IPAGDIRIWANG NG VANCOUVER ANG TULONG NG MGA CANADIANS MULA SA IBAT-IBANG BANSA SA ASIA SA BUWAN NG PAGKILALA SA PAMBANSANG KULTURA NG KANILANG LAHI

Ang media ay inaanyayahan na makidalo sa official kick-off festival na gaganapin sa Sabado, ika 22 ng Abril, 10:00 ng umaga sa Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, Goldcorp Centre for Arts, Simon Fraser University, 149 Hastings Street, Vancouver. Makipag-alam kay Ken McAteer or kay Patricia Lim sa media.vahms@gmail.com.

ABRIL 1, 2017, VANCOUVER, BC – Ang Vancouver HERITAGE Month Society ay nagagalak na bigyang pansin and lumalaking komunidad ng ibat-ibang kultura at pamana ng lahi mula sa ibat-ibang bansa sa Asia sa pagdiriwang ng 21^st annual explorASIAN festival ng national Asian Heritage Month na gagawin sa buwan ng Mayo. Taon-taon ang festival ay pumipili ng ibat-ibang Asian Canadian community para kilalanin ang kanilang abuloy sa Canadian society. Ang pasiya na ipagdiwang ang kontribusyon ng Canadians with mixed Asian heritage sa explorASIAN 2017 ay pinagbotohan ng VAHMS Board of Directors upang bigyan ng pansin ang nagbabagong dinamiko ng Canadian identity sabay sa pagdiriwang ng ika 150 annibersaryo ng bansang Canada.

Sinabi ni Ken McTeer: “We are excited to be working with the mixed Asian heritage community because they literally embody the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society’s vision to celebrate the hybridization of all arts and culture in Canada. Idinugtong pa niya: “explorASIAN 2017 stands to be one of our most inclusive festivals yet as it seeks to highlight those cross-cultural and cross-generational stories that are so common among all Canadians.”

Ang VAHMS ay nagbuo ng isang advisory panel ng kilalang personalidad mula sa Canadian mixed heritage community  kabilang sina Jess Chiba Stearns, award-winning filmmaker; Ana Ling Kaye, writer/editor; at Brandy Lien Worrall-Soriano, writer/editor upang makatulong sa special programming features ng ibat-ibang komunidad. Ang pagdiriwang sa Mayo ay kasama ang libreng family-friendly arts and cultural activities ng ibat-ibang kultura at pinagmulan sa Metro Vancouver. Upang malaman ang ibat-ibang festival events and activities, pumunta sa www.explorasian.org.

Advisory Panel Biographies

Jeff Chiba Stearns is an Emmy® nominated and multi award-winning animation and documentary filmmaker. Born in Kelowna, BC, of Japanese and European Heritage, he graduated from the Emily Carr University with a degree in Film Animation in 2001. Soon after, he founded Vancouver based boutique animation studio Meditating Bunny Studio Inc. where his many films including One Big Hapa Family and Mixed Match have broadcast around the world, screened in hundreds of international film festivals and garnered over 35 awards. In 2011, Jeff was awarded the Cultural Pioneer Award from Harvard University for advancing the dialogue on multiracial identity through his work. In that same year, Chiba Stearns co-founded the Hapa-palooza Festival to raise awareness, explore and celebrate mixed heritage and hybrid cultural identity.

Anna Ling Kaye is a writer, editor and 2015 Journey Prize finalist. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire , emerge and Culture magazines, and her journalism has appeared in The International Herald Tribune , The Tyee and subTerrain . Her translations have been set to music by contemporary composers. Kaye is co-founder and a director of Hapa-palooza Festival, former prose editor at PRISM international magazine and former editor of Ricepaper magazine. The Vancouver-based writer identifies as Taiwanese and Jewish-American.

Brandy Liên Worrall-Soriano is author of What Doesn’t Kill Us , a groundbreaking memoir about growing up in the din of her Vietnamese mother and American father’s trauma from the Vietnam War, and how it related to her breast cancer experience as a young adult. She is also the author of eight collections of poetry (the podBrandy series), as well as having served as editor of numerous magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is the owner and editor of Rabbit Fool Press , a small publishing company that specializes in mixed race and Asian North American writing and art. In 2015, Rabbit Fool Press published a wide-ranging anthology, Completely Mixed Up , which features over 70 Asian North American writers and artists of mixed heritage. Worrall-Soriano received her MA in Asian American Studies from UCLA in 2002 and her MFA in Creative Writing from UBC in 2012.

About the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society
Founded in 1996, the Vancouver Asian Heritage Month Society (VAHMS) is a non-profit society that is dedicated to recognizing Asian Canadian participation as an integral part of Canadian society. VAHMS organizes explorASIAN , an annual festival celebrating national Asian Heritage Month, to promote understanding and appreciation of Asian Canadian arts and culture in the month of May. The festival includes programs, activities and events produced in collaboration with various partners from the diverse communities in Metro Vancouver.

media.vahms@gmail.com
www.explorasian.org