Hapa-palooza 2012 Events
Wednesday September 12
Mixed Voices Raised
Writers, poets and artists in dialogue! Hosted by VPL Chief Librarian Sandra Singh in discussion with essayist and poets. A literary panel and q&a with the hottest authors exploring identity in their creative writing. Confirmed literary talents include essayist, poet and musician Wayde Compton and novelist and Zen priest Ruth Ozeki.
Location: Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, Alice MacKay Room
Time: 7pm-8:30pm
Free Event
Thursday September 13
Mixed Flicks
We bring back this much loved event, curated by the talented film-maker Jeff Chiba Stearns. Join us as we explore the latest media featuring mixed identity, with a mixed actors panel, film screenings, and q&a from the film-makers. The following film makers, actors and producers let their talent shine at this event: Octavio Warnock-Graham, Ann Marie Fleming, Jason Karman, Kyle Toy, and Jennifer Spence.
Film Screenings:
Yung Men – Trailer (Canada) – 1:30 minutes - dir: Jason Karman featuring Kyle Toy (Filmmaker and actor in attendance)
Mixed Match – Trailer (Canada) – 2 minute – dir. Jeff Chiba Stearns (Filmmaker in attendance) A new trailer for the upcoming documentary Mixed Match, an inspirational, emotional, and evocative feature-length documentary that explores the need to find mixed ethnicity bone marrow and cord blood donors to donate to multiethnic patients suffering from life threatening blood diseases such as leukemia.
Films:
Blue Skies (Canada) - 7 min. – dir. Ann Marie Fleming (Filmmaker in attendance)
In a world hungry for martyrs or heroes, of global corporate culture, pointless elections and ceaseless political strife, there is still a way to use history as a healing force. There is still a personal ability and responsibility to continue to make art; art that moves us beyond helplessness; art that can celebrate the very act of living.
Lilo and Me (US) – 10 minutes – dir: Kip Fulbeck
Come along for the ride as fulbeck documents his uncanny resemblance to Pocahontas, Aladdin, Mowgli, and other “ethnically ambiguous” animated characters in this hilarious expose on the muting of race in American popular media
Silences (US) – 22 minutes – dir: Octavio Warnock-Graham
Silences is a short documentary that is both an intimate personal journey as well as an intense family drama by first time director Octavio Warnock-Graham.
Location: Vancouver Public Library, Central Branch, Alice MacKay Room
Time: 7pm-8:30pm
Free Event
Saturday September 15
Hapa Family Day in the Park
Join us for this day of family fun! Bring down a blanket and meet other Hapas in your community. Face Painting, Games and more!
Slacklining by Absolute Slacklining, and DJed by DJ Conrad (powered by bicycle-carried speakers!)
Location: Strathcona Park, 857 Malkin Avenue
Time: 1pm-4pm
Free Event
Artist Bios
Mixed Voices
Ruth Ozeki is a filmmaker-turned-novelist-turned-Zen-Buddhist-priest. Her first novels, My Year of Meats and All Over Creation, both New York Times Notable Books, garnered critical acclaim for their ability to integrate science, technology, environmental politics and global popular culture into unique hybrid narrative forms. Ozeki was born and raised in New Haven, Connecticut, by an American father and a Japanese mother. After graduating from university, she did graduate work in classical Japanese literature, and worked in Kyoto’s entertainment or "water" district as a bar hostess, studied Noh drama and mask carving, founded a language school, and taught at a Japanese university. She then moved to New York and started a film career, working in commercial television and media production, including low budget horror film and Japanese TV. She directed several independent films, which have screened at Sundance and on PBS, including an award-winning autobiographical film, Halving the Bones, about her Japanese mother and grandmother. In 1997, she moved to Vancouver and became a Canadian citizen in 2006. She lives with her husband, environmental artist, Oliver Kellhammer, on Cortes Island. A long-time meditator, Ruth was ordained as a Soto Zen Buddhist priest in 2010. In 2009, Ozeki’s My Year of Meats was the inaugural One Book, One Vancouver Title. Her new novel, A Tale for the Time Being, was published by Viking Penguin in 2013 and nominated for the Man Booker Prize.
Sandra Singh Sandra became Vancouver's chief librarian in December 2010. She returned to Vancouver Public Library after serving as the director of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre at the University of British Columbia. Prior to that appointment, Sandra held two senior management positions at the Vancouver Public Library, first as the director of Branches East/South and Outreach Services, followed by director of Systems and Special Projects. Sandra is currently a member of the British Columbia Library Association and the Canadian Library Association. She is of Indo-Nepalese and German heritage, and was born in Fiji.
Wayde Compton is an award-winning filmmaker and Vancouver writer whose books include After Canaan: Essays on Race, Writing, and Region, Performance Bond, Bluesprint: Black British Columbian Literature and Orature and 49th Parallel Psalm. He and Jason de Couto perform turntable-based sound poetry as a duo called The Contact Zone Crew. Director of The Writer’s Studio, a creative writing program in Continuing Studies at Simon Fraser University, Compton also founded the Hogan’s Alley Project and Commodore Books. In 2011, Wayde was the VPL’s 7th Writer-in-Residence.
Julie Flett is a Vancouver-based Métis artist and illustrator who incorporates photography, drawing, and painting into her practice. Born in Toronto, Julie has spent much of the last two decades in Western Canada. Her mixed ancestry plays a large role in her work. Each project is a place for her to explore her roots, talk with elders, and make connections with her community. She was the recipient of an award by the Canadian Native Arts Foundation Visual Arts Acquisition Program in 1993, and was a finalist twice in the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize (one of the BC Book Prizes), for her illustrations in The Moccasins and Zoe and the Fawn. Zoe and the Fawn was awarded a Medal in the category of Multicultural Picture Books in the 2007 Moonbeam Children’s Books Awards. Her book Lii Yiiboo Nayaapiwak lii Swer: l’alfabet di michif, Owls See Clearly at Night: A Michif alphabet, published by Simply Read Books, was a Finalist for the Govenor General’s Award for Children’s Illustration. Flett is the first artist of aboriginal descent to have been nominated for a Govenor General’s Award.
Mixed Flicks
Jeff Chiba Stearns is an independent documentary and animation filmmaker from Kelowna, B.C., of Japanese and European heritage. A graduate of the Film Animation program at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, he founded Meditating Bunny Studio Inc., which specializes in animation and documentary films as well as animated commercials. His films, Kip and Kyle (2000), The horror of Kindergarten (2001), “What Are You Anyways?” (2005), Yellow Sticky Notes (2007), Ode to a Post-it Note (2010) and One Big Hapa Family (2010) have screened at hundreds of film festivals around the world, broadcast internationally, and garnered 32 awards including a Webby Award and the Prix du Public at the prestigious Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival. Chiba Stearns work has been nominated for an Emmy® Award and is currently working on a feature documentary Mixed Match. On top of filmmaking, Chiba Stearns has also instructed college animation, written articles for national publications and lectured around the world on topics of multiethnic identity, filmmaking, short film distribution, and animation.
Jason Karman is a Vancouver filmmaker, born in Indonesia and raised in Western Canada. His works often incorporate themes of love and redemption. While loving drama, Jason is currently exploring song and dance as alternative ways to convey narrative. He is a British Columbia Arts Council Grant recipient and has won awards in Vancouver and Montreal.
Ann Marie Fleming is an award-winning Canadian independent filmmaker, writer and artist, born in Okinawa, of Chinese and Australian parentage. Her film work incorporates various techniques: animation, documentary, experimental, dramatic, and primarily deals with themes of family, history and memory, in a continuing media critique. She has directed over 20 short and feature length animated, documentary, and narrative films. Currently, Ann Marie is working on several projects: a dramatic script of the life and loves of her great grandfather, "Shanghai Follies", and "Window Horses" a feature-length animated father-daughter story that involves poetry and immigrants and takes place in Shiraz, Iran. She co-founded Global Mechanic, an animation/film/design production house, in Vancouver. Ann Marie also happens to be the great-granddaughter of the legendary magician, acrobat and vaudeville performer Long Tack Sam, and in 2003 completed a documentary film based on his life. Blue Skies (2002) is a reaction to the events of 9/11, and a riff on events in Long Tack Sam's life. It won best Canadian Short Film at the Toronto International Film Festival and has played on screens from India to Iran and has appeared on tv in Canada, the US and China.
Jennifer Spence is a Canadian actor. Her acting credits include playing the part of Dr. Lisa Park on the Stargate Universe television series. Other television series in which she has had principal roles are Exes and Ohs, The 4400, Reunion, Write & Wrong, and recurring roles on Killer Instinct and DaVinci's Inquest.
Immediately following the cancellation of Stargate Universe, Spence joined some other of the show's cast (including Michael Dopud) in a pilot of the new show Echoes, produced by Stargate's Mark Savela and Ken Kabatoff. In 2012, Spence had roles in episodes of three network television shows, The Killing, Alcatraz and Supernatural. Spence will have a recurring role in the science fiction television series Continuum, which premiered May 2012. Spence was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, to a British father and third-generation Japanese Canadian mother. She currently resides in Vancouver, British Columbia
Tetsuro Shigematsu is on a quest to offend, enlighten and entertain. His voice is familiar to millions of Canadians thanks to his years of serving as the irreverent national host of The Roundup on CBC Radio One, where he also worked as a nationally syndicated radio columnist for which he won two RTNDA awards for Best Commentary. On TV, you can watch him talk smack as the notorious Samurai-in-Residence for MTV/Spike’s most watched reality series The Deadliest Warrior. A former writer for This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Tetsuro is a Vanier scholar, and is currently pursuing his PhD at UBC conducting research on YouTube through his own YouTube channel ShiggyTV. read his column on Huffington Post, and follow him on twitter @tweetsuro
Kyle Toy is a multi-faceted and versatile performer, working in the worlds of film acting, theater, and dance. He has acted in films such as the Sony Pictures feature "Center Stage: Turn it Up" and the Insight films feature "Personal Effects" with Ashton Kutcher & Michelle Pfieffer. Toy has appeared in commercials for Dell Computers Inc., starred in several independent films, and worked with theatre companies in his home of Vancouver, all while maintaining a steady schedule of guest roles with dance companies throughout Canada.