 asian american film festival to showcase filmmakers ken eng adele pham and wong fu productions asian american film festival to showcase filmmakers ken eng adele pham and wong fu productions asian american film festival to showcase filmmakers ken eng adele pham and won  tue 11062018 1302 https dailycollegiancom wpcontent uploads 20181135162097101554235593417677102373502254055424 the university of massachusetts first asian american film festival will showcase filmmakers kenneth ken eng adele pham and members of popular youtube channel wong fu productions the yuri kochiyama cultural center will present the festival from nov 79 from 630 to 900 pm in campus center rooms 174176 the featured filmmakers will make guest appearances lily tang a sophomore political science and bdic major who helped to organize the event explained the ykcc noticed there was a lack of a big event in the fall semester because we concentrate and do big events in the spring she and her fellow organizers saw that there were multiple asian american film festivals in boston and said we thought it would be awesome to bring that to western mass on nov 7 the first film to be shown will be eng s my life in china eng grew up in boston attending boston latin school and has used his filmmaking to benefit the community in boston chinatown as well as having his work featured on pbs on the umass event page for the film festival  eng s documentary is described as a story of migration that is passed down from father to son as we retrace the precarious steps he took in search of a better life ultimately asking the question what does it mean to be both chinese and american eng s father who fled china s cultural revolution in 1966 died a few weeks ago according to tang she added i think this will be the first time he ll be showing his film since his father s passing i think it will be a really special and hard moment for him to watch this film but also really special because he s doing it in massachusetts where it s a community he really cares about on nov 8 the second film to be shown will be pham s nailed it in this documentary pham a mixedrace vietnameseamerican woman looks into the nail salon industry valued at 8 billion and how the vietnamese came to dominate this line of work tang explained it discusses the hardships of being refugees because the vietnamese most of that particular wave of immigrants they were refugees after the vietnam war and finding economic success when they came from such as hard place her identity as a vietnamese woman this is also a story that s salient to her but also what s really interesting is that she s mixed race as well so it s like she has multiple identities at play and that s something we really wanted to highlight when we chose our filmmakers this year to have people that hold different identities and different stories to come to umass on nov 9 the final day of the film festival two members of wong fu productions taylor chan and wesley chan will attend and show their latest work yappie a series about young asian professionals wong fu productions was formed by cofounders philip wang ted fu and wesley chan according to their website  and now has over 3000000 subscribers additionally  the group s youtube channel  currently has over 520 million views since they joined the platform in 2007 tang reflected on the work of wong fu saying it talks about the role of this generation as young asian american professionals how do we navigate through life when we re so kind of separated from our parents struggles and trauma of being refugeesslashimmigrants because we grew up in the us we learned english and we re in college have that success and american dream so what does it mean for us to continue to be advocates for our parents and carry on that legacy and heritage she also noted the arrangement of the screenings saying it s almost linear in sequence immigration the coming to the us the struggles in the country that the groups faced the resiliency the successes and then the very end with wong fu the now what our generation and what story we want to tell in addition to the ykcc the event is being supported by cohosts the vietnamese student association the asian american student association and the taiwanese chinese student association as well as a broad range of sponsors after each film screening attendees can participate in a questionandanswer session with the filmmakers have chances to win prizes through a raffle and will be served asian meals the location in the campus center basement is physically accessible and anyone from the public or the from the five college consortium is welcome to attend according to the organizers one of those organizers is lydia phung a senior operations and information management major who commented on the importance of asian americans in the media citing this year s increase in representation through films such as crazy rich asians and to all the boys i ve loved before saying this year we ve had so many productions of people representing asian culture and it s just amazing she added i think it s also nice to have filmmakers who are able to relate to us fellow organizer chan kim a junior mathematics major hopes the film festival will become an annual event and that it will bring more attention to the ykcc which is located on the bottom floor of worcester dining commons saying it s overall more exposure at the end of the day especially for our center people come down here and they re lost so that s something we re trying to change source daily collegian  