I Could Watch It On An iPad, But I'd Rather Not

Abraham Ferrer, staffmember at Visual Communications, the nation's premier Asian Pacific American media arts center, assesses the ever-changing landscape of AAPI cinema in all its accomplishments and dubious achievements

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Category: Viet Kieu Cinema

Asian Pacific American Cinema, Asian Pacific Filmmakers Experience, Bao Nguyen, BE WATER, Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Viet Kieu Cinema, Visual Communications1 Comment

(Late) Dispatches from Park City, Part One: Practicing to BE WATER

April 18, 2020 Abraham Ferrer

Why say it in words when you have VIDEO? In the first of two dispatches from Park City, a chat with filmmaker Bao Nguyen (BE WATER)… Continue reading (Late) Dispatches from Park City, Part One: Practicing to BE WATER

I Could Watch It On An iPad, But I’d Rather Not

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I'm sorry, but Imma say it: SOME businesses HAVE no business re-opening in @littletokyola. #truth

This place has fed @vcmediaorg staffers ever since we moved into the Union Center for the Arts back in 1998. Time to support one of our stakeholder businesses in @littletokyola #yass

A Change of Pace: While working on a photographic essay project, I score a Chinese chicken salad from the good folks at @cafedulcela before heading home. Big 'ups to @jameschoi608 and his crew. Gotta support those @littletokyola businesses who are taking care of our community's stakeholders. #GoLittleTokyo #yup

I made this photograph back in December of last year, but for a variety of reasons, I did not post it. While going over the backlog of images I need to offload from my not-so-smartphone, I found this image, which with all things at @vcmediaorg has its own story to tell... Once upon a time, like, back in the 1970s, this four-wheeled contraption was the audio cart used by the late and sadly-missed Gabriel Cubos, for years VC's ace sound recordist on many of the organization's major film productions. Imagine seeing this cart carrying a high-tech 1/4-inch tape recorder (ie: a Nagra), a wave-form monitor, an oscilloscope, field headphones, moorings for a fishpole microphone holder, and cables to hook up all that gear to insure a robust audio documentation of everything from oral histories to pages and pages of scripted dialogue. This contraption, and the tools it housed, allowed Gabe and those who would follow him to do their job. Since we moved in to the former Union Church in Little Tokyo's historic First Street North district back in March 1998, Gabe's sound cart was unceremoniously shoved into the back end of a supply closet and became cluttered with random tools, cleaning supplies, and toiletries. That is, until last December when it was pulled out in an effort to repurpose the closet for reception supplies. Once other staffers became acquainted with the cart's history, we could not bear to part with it. Instead, we moved it into our back storeroom, with the idea that as an historic artifact of VC's legacy, it would sit in stasis, never to be used as a storage vehicle, nor to have anything sitting on top of it, as if it were a cheap liquor caddy. It's kinda ironic that one of our current staffers, Josaen Ronquillo, is posing with Gabe's cart: a production guru in his own right, Josaen's own sound recording gear typically consists of little more than a hand-held Tascam digital recorder, a shotgun mic, and a USB cable to offload the results onto a desktop editing workstation. Definitely nothing nearly as hefty as the gear that Gabe packed. But the generational legacy is apparent in this picture. Which is why we'll likely never part with Gabe's sound cart.

Okay, This: Three years ago, @emilyting917 handed me a stuffed animal with the directive to whore the little critter out on behalf of her film IT'S ALREADY TOMORROW IN HONG KONG. And so, the tradition continues with her latest long-form narrative, GO BACK TO CHINA, which in the middle of a weeklong theatrical run at the Laemmle Glendale. While I figure out additional situations to get this little fellah hooked up with, I strongly encourage to keep that #AbeOpen going strong by buying a ticket to see her latest work up on a big screen, where it can best be appreciated. @gobacktochinafilm, that's who to follow. #yup

I think that when curators were working to up with the title "TRANSCENDIENTS" for the current show at the @jamuseum they were thinking of these guys. #ELATaiko #DemonDrummers #yup

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