Together, Sundance Institute and TAAF are launching Sundance Institute | The Asian American Foundation Fellowship and Collab Scholarship to provide Asian American and Pacific Islander storytellers with creative and tactical support to develop their skills and bring their projects to life. The Fellowship and the Scholarship aim to improve AAPI representation in the film, theater, and television industries over the long-term by cultivating AAPI artists and elevating their stories.
Our first cohort of six AAPI Fellowship members will have a year-round learning experience to advance their development in the arts. Each artist will receive a $20,000 unrestricted grant to support their individual projects, as well as customized support from the Institute.
In addition, six emerging AAPI creatives will receive a Sundance Collab scholarship to enroll in a live online course focused on their discipline of choice, receive a Creator+ Sundance Collab membership to access the Master Classes in the video library, participate in exclusive networking and community-building events, and receive feedback from Sundance Collab Advisors on their projects.
The Fellowship and Scholarship are made possible by support from TAAF, through a grant provided by its AAPI Giving Challenge partner Panda Express and The MacArthur Foundation.
“As an American-born company founded by Chinese immigrants, we recognize the value of corporate engagement in philanthropic activities to make strategic investments in our communities. We are particularly passionate about fostering greater cultural understanding and appreciation through the power of storytelling of AAPI communities through education and the arts. We are proud to support TAAF’s program with the Sundance Institute, as it drives necessary resources toward strengthening and empowering AAPI artists to share their distinct voices and further diversify the American entertainment industry.”
—Andrea Cherng, Panda Express Chief Brand Officer
“MacArthur’s aims are centered around leveraging philanthropy as a means to empower underserved communities, and we are proud to be a part of such an effort alongside the Sundance Institute, TAAF, and Panda Express. We look forward to seeing the impact that the Fellowship and Scholarship have on shaping the next generation of AAPI artists in film and media.”
—Kathy Im, MacArthur Foundation, Director of Journalism and Media
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Sundance Institute | The Asian American Foundation Fellowship
Tadashi Nakamura
Third Act: On its surface, Third Act is a biopic that explores Robert Nakamura’s life and role as the “Godfather of Asian American film," made by his son, Tadashi Nakamura. But with Robert’s diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, the film poses a complex question: how can a father and son say goodbye?
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Tadashi Nakamura
Tadashi Nakamura is an Emmy-winning director and was named one of CNN’s Young People Who Rock for being the youngest filmmaker at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival and one of the Top Rising Asian American Directors on IMDb. His films include Mele Murals, Jake Shimabukuro: Life On Four Strings, A Song For Ourselves, and Pilgrimage.
Vera Brunner-Sung
Bitterroot: A Hmong man in Montana hides the truth about his lost job and failed marriage from his mother. But when she suddenly falls ill, he must finally reckon with his painful past to save them both.
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Vera Brunner-Sung
Vera Brunner-Sung was born in Michigan to parents from Korea and Switzerland. Her films have been screened at festivals and museums around the world including Sundance, Rotterdam, the Whitney Museum, and Ann Arbor Film Festival. She has received fellowships from the Center for Asian American Media and Sundance FilmTwo.
Desdemonda Chiang
Made in USA : After getting passed up for a promotion and unexpectedly fired, a Chinese-American casino host takes in the pregnant teen daughter of her wealthiest client and turns her home into a birth hotel to regain control of her life.
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Desdemonda Chiang
Desdemonda Chiang is a nationally renowned stage director working in new plays, Shakespeare, and musicals. She is known for her visceral, no-nonsense approach to storytelling, with her distinct point of view as an immigrant and Asian American woman, and a specific interest in international and multilingual stories.
Sean Wang
Dìdi (弟弟): Fremont, CA. 2008. In the last month of summer before high school begins, an impressionable thirteen-year-old Taiwanese American boy learns what his family can’t teach him: how to skate, how to flirt and how to love your mom.
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Sean Wang
Sean Wang is a filmmaker from Fremont, CA, and a 2020 Sundance Ignite Fellow. Most recently, his film, H.A.G.S (Have A Good Summer), was acquired and released by the New York Times. He is currently developing his first feature film, Dìdi (弟弟), which was awarded the SFFILM Rainin Grant.
Neo Sora
Earthquake: A rabble-rousing teenager living in near-future Tokyo, where inhabitants await the next big earthquake, must decide between continuing a life of youthful abandon, or losing one of his best friends whose blossoming political consciousness has made him more distant.
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Neo Sora
Neo Sora is a Japanese-American filmmaker working in New York and Tokyo. His short The Chicken (2020) premiered at Locarno International Film Festival 2020. Filmmaker Magazine named Neo one of the 25 New Faces of Independent Film in 2020. In 2022, he participated in the Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury
Rheology: Rheology is a live concert-memoir-physics-symposium. An artist son studies his physicist mother. She studies the strange behavior of sand. Together, they unravel the science—the story—of how things flow.
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Shayok Misha Chowdhury
Shayok Misha Chowdhury is a many-tentacled writer and director. Misha was awarded a Jonathan Larson Grant for musical theater and collaborated on the Grammy-winning album Calling All Dawns. Upcoming: Public Obscenities (Soho Rep & Naatco). Recently: Mukhagni (The Public Theater); Brother, Brother (New York Theatre Workshop); Englandbashi (Ann Arbor Film Festival).
Sundance Institute | The Asian American Foundation Collab Scholarship
Jenna Lam
Ambitious: An impatient, bold Vietnamese-Cambodian-American girl who navigates her new life as a college-dropout despite her immigrant mother's wishes and plans for her.
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Jenna Lam
Jenna Lam is a Southeast Asian creative who relishes in business operations and identifying themes in communities' stories to convert into creative projects.
Leomax (Ziyuan) He
Gungnir: 2020 Los Angeles, the outbreak of the COVID-19 accidentally coincides with the birthday wish of a 9 years old boy, Leo, who wants to stop a Chinese-American girl Charly he crushes from going back to China. He who thinks the pandemic is due to him panics everyday as he fears others will learn this secret.
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Leomax (Ziyuan) He
Leomax (Ziyuan) He received his bachelor's degree in Digital Media Arts and is currently a Film Directing MFA candidate at CalArts. He is an alumnus of Nespresso Talents 2021 and the Artist-in-Residence program of Art Nova 100. He wants to make narratives that have a sober intoxication.
Nicole Solis-Sison
Papeles: A coming of age film about two young asylum refugees searching for the ICE agent that saved them.
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Nicole Solis-Sison
Nicole Solis-Sison is a multi-racial writer, producer and director. She is a founding member of the Undocumented Filmmakers Collective, an organization that tackles inequities facing immigrants in the media field. She is working on a script that explores rejection, acceptance, death, and healing as a young refugee.
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Georgia Fu
Approximate Joy: A young Taiwanese American teenager decides to run away with her high school history teacher to escape her grief from the sudden death of her father. On the road, she discovers that no matter how far you run, you cannot run away from yourself.
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Georgia Fu
Georgia Fu is a Taiwanese American filmmaker interested in thematics surrounding unusual points of connection. Her shorts have been recognized at festivals such as Slamdance, New Orleans Film Festival, Hollyshorts, and LAAPFF. She is currently developing two features, one of which is an adaptation of a story by Edward Yang.
Norbert Shieh
Preserves: Preserves follows the lives of those who keep a disappearing agricultural tradition alive through intimate moments between work and their quiet domestic lives. Taking place in Taiwan, the film is a lyrical portrait that explores “table to farm” for the culinary ingredient, suan cai - a pickled mustard green.
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Norbert Shieh
Norbert Shieh is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker and cinematographer whose films explore the subtleties of the everyday. His work thrives with support from Creative Capital, CAAM, BAVC, Logan Nonfiction Program, True/False and Visual Communications. In 2019, Filmmaker Magazine named him as one of 25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Simi Prasad
Changing of the Guard: In a mythical world inspired by medieval India, after her aunt is executed for failing to prevent the mysterious murder of the king she was sworn to defend, a dutiful commoner will take her place as an elite guard to the new authoritarian queen to protect her family from retribution.
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Simi Prasad
Simi Prasad is currently a showrunner’s assistant on a new fantasy show for Disney+. Previously, she assisted a feature literary agent at WME. Simi grew up in London, England, though her American accent implies otherwise. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton University with degrees in Psychology and Creative Writing.
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