Virtual Ready, Set, Pitch!
Thursday, October 27, 2022
9:00-11:00 a.m. PT/ 12:00-2:00 p.m. ET
Norbert Shieh, Pallavi Somusetty, Kevin Truong and The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) invite you to the 2022 Virtual Ready, Set, Pitch! Join our 2022 CAAM Fellows as they present their Asian American non-fiction films to a jury of representatives from the Ford Foundation, the International Documentary Association (IDA), the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and the Sundance Institute.
Lauren Pabst, Senior Program Director at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation will start us off with a few words. The Fellows will have eight minutes to pitch and fifteen minutes for jury Q&A. The winning pitch will receive a $10,000 grant from CAAM supported by the MacArthur Foundation, and the winner will be announced in early November.
We invite you to follow these exciting Asian American documentary filmmakers. Continue reading to learn more about their projects and Register for the Pitch event here.
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If you have any questions about this program, please email our team at events@caamedia.org.
2022 CAAM Fellows
Norbert Shieh is a Taiwanese American filmmaker, visual artist, and director of photography whose work explores the subtleties of the everyday. Based in Los Angeles, Norbert has directed commissioned projects for KCET, The Autry Museum, European Capital of Culture, and Pacific Arts Movement. As a cinematographer, he filmed a season of the LA-Emmy award winning series Lost LA, and lensed projects for filmmakers such as Zeinabu irene Davis (Pandemic Bread), Chris Chan Lee (Silent River), and Deborah Stratman (Hacked Circuit). He’s been a recipient of a Creative Capital Award, and is an inaugural Sundance Institute / The Asian American Foundation Collab Scholar. His work has received support from Bay Area Video Coalition, True/False, Visual Communications, Logan Nonfiction Program, and CNEX. In 2019, Filmmaker Magazine named Norbert as one of “25 New Faces of Independent Film.”
Project: Preserves
Preserves takes place in the rural region of Yunlin County, Taiwan and follows individuals who keep the agricultural traditions of an ingredient, suan cai (a pickled mustard green) alive. This lyrical meditation on food, the aging labor force, and farming evolves into a further exploration of globalization and the preservation of identities.
Pallavi Somusetty (she/her/hers) is an Oakland-based documentary filmmaker who creates video portraits that center BIPOC voices in the hope that we feel fully seen in the complexities of our identities and journeys, and that meaningful impact can result. She is a Series Producer for the Asian American Documentary Network’s Storytelling Initiatives, and a 2022 Center for Asian American Media Fellow currently directing her first doc feature with a narrative feature in development. Pallavi’s award-winning short doc, Escaping Agra, has screened in festivals across the world. Her work has been supported by The Puffin Foundation, Eddie Bauer, the Filmmaker Fund, Re-Present Media, Studio IX Project, Athena Pitch Forum, and more. Pallavi holds a documentary-focused Master in Journalism from UC Berkeley and a BA in Creative Writing from UC Santa Cruz. In her spare time, she climbs rocks with her family and supports incarcerated pregnant people as a trained doula.
Project: Welcome Home Jhaiji
Berkeley-based historian and artist Barnali, along with a group of committed activists, find themselves spearheading a grassroots campaign to rename a street after a South Asian woman who experienced racial discrimination over a hundred years ago. In the process, they transform the way they feel about themselves and how they belong, and spark a nationwide movement.
Kevin Truong is a documentary filmmaker, photographer and journalist. He has received fellowships from both the Center for Asian American Media and BAVC Media, is a grantee of the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program and a proud member of A-Doc. As a journalist, he has worked with NBC News, Motherboard Tech by VICE and Student Reporting Labs at the PBS Newshour. His work often explores the LGBTQ and Asian American experiences and he is currently working on his first feature length film, a personal documentary about his mother and her experiences with the War in Vietnam. Kevin has a B.S. in Economics from Portland State University, a B.F.A. in Photography from Pratt Institute and a M.A. in Journalism specialization in documentary filmmaking from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Project: Mai American
A 70-year-old Vietnamese American refugee living in Oregon writes down her personal history, indelibly shaped by the war in Vietnam. As she shares her story with her filmmaker son, they begin separate but parallel journeys navigating the space between healing and confronting the traumas of their past.
Opening Speaker
Lauren Pabst, Senior Program Officer, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Lauren works on grantmaking in support of Nonfiction Multimedia Storytelling and Professional Nonprofit Reporting. Prior to joining the Foundation in 2012, Lauren worked as Project Manager and Researcher for the Rada Film Group on the 13-year longitudinal documentary American Promise about race, parenting, and education, which received a Special Jury Prize at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was broadcast on the PBS series POV in 2014. Previously, Lauren worked with Black Public Media, and Public Policy Productions. Lauren graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelors of Arts in English from Boston University. From 2013-2015, Lauren served on the board of Latinos Progresando, the largest Latino-led, low-cost, family based legal immigration services provider in Illinois. She is a member of the steering committee of Nuestro Futuro, an initiative of the Chicago Community Trust.
Ready, Set, Pitch! Jury
Amber Espinosa-Jones, Senior Manager of Artist & Audience Impact, Sundance Institute
Amber Espinosa-Jones is a creative producer and racial equity facilitator from Oakland, CA. She is a 2021-2022 Documentary New Leader and currently producing the feature film Standing Above the Clouds following Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists executive produced by Multitude Films. Amber also serves as Senior Manager of Artist and Audience Impact at Sundance Institute where she oversees strategy, granting, and community partnerships for artists and audiences of color. With a diverse arts background in theatre and film, Amber is a graduate of the University of Southern California’s Dramatic Arts and Media Arts + Practice programs with an interest in art for social change and collaborative community building.
Jannette Napoli, Manager of Content and Initiatives, ITVS
Jannette is a San Francisco-based film professional with experience in development, production, and exhibition. As Manager of Content and Initiatives at ITVS Jannette oversees a development portfolio while working across various funding initiatives. Prior to joining ITVS she was the Executive Assistant at the Telluride Film Festival. Jannette produced the feature documentary Bleeding Audio by director Chelsea Christer (Cinequest ’20, Slamdance ’21). Her writing has been published by Cleo Journal and featured among IDA’s Essential Doc Reads of the Week. Raised in the US and Mexico, Jannette brings her mixed roots to all aspects of her work.
Jon-Sesrie Goff, Program Officer, Creativity and Free Expression, Ford Foundation
Jon-Sesrie Goff is part of the Creativity and Free Expression team and makes grants globally in documentary film, new media, and visual storytelling for the foundation’s JustFilms program. As an accomplished multidisciplinary artist, curator, and arts administrator, he brings a wide range of experience to Ford after serving as executive director of the Flaherty Film Seminar and creating the inaugural film program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture. His body of work includes extensive institutional, community, and family archival research, visual documentation, and oral history interviews in the coastal South on the legacy of Black land ownership and Gullah Geechee heritage preservation. Jon engages with his work from the paradigm of a social change instigator. He studied sociology, economics, and theater at Morehouse College, completed his BA at The New School, along with an MFA from Duke University in experimental and documentary arts. Jon’s work as an educator includes Duke University, Villanova University, and West Chester University of Pennsylvania, and his grantmaking and jury panel work span the National Endowment for the Arts, Tribeca Film Institute, the International Documentary Association, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Blackstar Film Festival, Oberhausen Seminar, and CinemAfrica Film Festival among others.
Keisha Knight, Director of Funds, IDA
Keisha Knight is the Director of Funds at the International Documentary Association. In this capacity Keisha oversees a portfolio of IDA’s granting programs including IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, Logan Elevate, Nonfiction Access Initiative, and the Pare Lorentz Documentary Fund among other granting programs. Keisha is an arts administrator, distributor, programmer, and educator with an inalienable commitment to the moving image and its associates. Keisha uses her work across the fields of film, art, and education to support robust media ecosystems. Keisha holds a BA in Comparative Religion from Barnard College, an MA in Media Studies from Pratt Institute, and is completing a PhD in Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University. As an educator Keisha has taught in classrooms from Palembang, Indonesia to Bennington, Vermont. She has served on numerous grant review panels, film festival juries, screening committees, and was a programmer for the New York African Film Festival and the Maryland Film Festival. Through her distribution work at Sentient.Art.Film, Keisha has had the honor of working very closely with established and emerging filmmakers, moving image artists, and industry professionals from around the world.
Pitch Coach
Anuradha Rana is an independent filmmaker, educator, and program leader based in Chicago. Born and raised in India, her immigrant roots create the lens of a curious interloper at the heart of her films, where everyday characters push conventional boundaries. She is an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Documentary Program at DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts, the Creative Lead for the Diverse Voices in Doc Fellowship organized by Kartemquin Films and Community Film Workshop of Chicago, and part of the leadership team for the Asian American Doc Network (A-DOC). She was named one of Chicago’s 50 Screen Gems in 2017 & 2019, a DCASE esteemed artist and DOC NYC’s Documentary New Leader in 2021. She recently completed feature documentary, Musher, which is screening at film festival and is currently on post-production on feature documentary, Language of Opportunity (Tribeca Film Institute Network 2020, A-DOC Producer’s Lab 2019). She is in development on fiction feature, The Punk Show in Chicago, which was chosen for the Chicago Independent Producer’s Lab in 2021.
2022 CAAM Mentors
Su Kim is an Academy Award nominated and Emmy® and two-time Peabody Award-winning producer in New York. She is entrepreneurial, creative and committed to crafting compelling stories and supporting independent filmmakers. Her films in release include the OSCAR® and Primetime Emmy®-nominated Hale County This Morning, This Evening, Midnight Traveler and Bitterbrush. As a producer, she was awarded the 2015 Women at Sundance fellowship, CPB/PBS Producers Workshop Fellowship as well as funding from ITVS, the Sundance Documentary fund, NYSCA, the Tribeca Film Institute and California Humanities. She is currently producing One Bullet (director Carol Dysinger), nsin & Me (director Rodrigo Reyes), Free Chol Soo Lee (directors Eugene Yi and Julie Ha) and Sarah (director TracyDrozTragos). Su Kim was the New York producer for Learning to Skateboard in a War Zone (If You’re a Girl) which won the OSCAR® and BAFTA.
Marjan Safinia is an Iranian documentary filmmaker whose films examine identity, community, and social justice. Most recently, with Grace Lee, she produced and directed And She Could be Next, a two-part documentary series about women of color transforming American politics, which debuted as POV’s first series in June 2020 and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Best Documentary. Her work has been supported by IDA Enterprise Fund, Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Sundance Institute, Doc Society, and she is a Sundance Catalyst Fellow. Until 2018, Marjan was the longest-serving President of the Board of Directors of the International Documentary Association (and the first woman of color to lead IDA since its founding in 1982.) She is on the Board of Chicken & Egg Pictures, a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch, a co-host of The D-Word, and a founding member of Beyond Inclusion.
Hao Wu’s documentary films have received funding support from The Ford Foundation JustFilms, ITVS, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute and NYSCA, and distributed through Netflix, Amazon Prime, Paramount Plus, PBS and BBC, among others. His feature documentary, People’s Republic of Desire, about China’s live-streaming phenomenon, won the Grand Jury Award at the 2018 SXSW. Wu followed that film with All in my Family, a Netflix Original Documentary that launched globally in 2019. 76 DAYS, Wu’s latest work and the first feature documentary on the COVID-19 pandemic to play at a film festival, world premiered at Toronto International Film Festival in September 2020. Distributed by MTV Documentary Films, it was named a Critic’s Pick by The New York Times, shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, nominated for the Gotham Awards, and won a Peabody Award and a Primetime Emmy Award for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking.
Pitch Event Producer
Tonilyn A. Sideco (they/he) is a proud booty-shaking trans genderqueer love warrior. The fourth child of Filipino immigrants, Toni was born and raised in San Francisco’s Sunset District and is now a SF & Brooklyn-based writer, director, actor, creative educator and professor for both stage and film. An Emmy-nominated host and writer with PBS and PBS Learning, Toni also utilizes media and storytelling as a tool for activism and social change. They are a player and singer with Bindlestiff Studio, Broadway Barkada and Granny Cart Gangstas, an all-Asian women and non-binary sketch-comedy troupe. Recent credits with Prospect Theater Company, 5th Avenue Theater, Joe’s Pub, NYC, Audible Theater and co-producer and assistant director for Little Sky by Jess X. Snow. They currently consult and create with their production company ToneOnTop Productions, focusing on the joy, talents and experiences of queer people of color through food, music, multi-media performance, short-form documentary and narrative film. @ToneOnTop
CAAM Staff
Donald Young is the Center for Asian American Media’s Director of Programs. He oversees CAAM’s program areas, and specifically develops and implements CAAM’s national productions and national PBS strategies. In public television, Donald has supervised the national broadcasts of over 150 award-winning projects. As a producer, he has worked both in documentaries and independent feature films. Key projects include the epic five-hour PBS history series Asian Americans, a co-production with WETA and produced by Renee Tajima-Peña; Family Pictures, USA by Thomas Allen Harris; and a feature film adaptation of Chang-rae Lee’s Coming Home Again directed by Wayne Wang.
Sapana Sakya’s background is in journalism and documentary filmmaking. She recently returned from four years in Nepal, working with the Kathmandu International Mountain Film Festival (kimff) to create kimff Doc Lab supporting Nepali filmmakers. Currently, she is the Talent Development & Special Projects Manager at the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). In her previous work with CAAM, she served as Public Media Director, overseeing funding for independent filmmakers. She trained with distinguished filmmaker Jon Else at the University of California, Berkeley and has since produced and directed several documentaries (Daughters of Everest, Red White Blue November, Oklahoma Home). Prior to her documentary work, she was a feature writer with the English language daily, The Bangkok Post and worked in communications at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). She currently lives in El Cerrito, California with her family.
Czarina Garcia Czarina Garcia is the Media Fund Manager at the Center for Asian American Media. She is responsible for administering CAAM’s Media Fund initiatives, in accordance with the organization’s strategic direction and CPB guidelines. Born and raised in the Philippines, she received her bachelor’s degree in Communications from De La Salle University-Manila. Prior to joining CAAM, Czarina has worked on various film and digital projects in Manila. Since migrating to the Bay Area and joining CAAM in 2017, she has worked with the organization in multiple capacities; from CAAMFest staffer, to associate producer on a number of CAAM funded initiatives and productions. During her spare time, Czarina also works as a freelance video editor.
Christian Yau-Weeks works on CAAM’s yearly youth programmatic initiatives and aids in digital media strategy, festival work, and CAAM’s Memories to Light archive. He holds a BA in Visual Culture and Race/ Ethnicity studies from Wesleyan University and is driven by the generative possibilities of accessible multimedia storytelling, the preservation of culture, and the cultivation of community. Prior to his work at CAAM, Christian has been involved in various non-profit organizations focused on providing camp resources, educational support, and emotional learning for local youth.
Thank You to Our Sponsors
The 2022 CAAM Fellowship Program is made possible with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and simplehuman.