Olivia Trinidad Harrison is an American author and film producer, and the widow of English musician George Harrison of the Beatles. She first worked in the music industry in Los Angeles, for A&M Records, where she met Harrison and then helped run his Dark Horse record label. In 1990, she launched the Romanian Angel Appeal to raise funds for the thousands of orphans left abandoned in Romania after the fall of Communism.
Philip Villamin Vera Cruz was a Filipino American labor leader and farmworker. He helped found the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), which later merged with the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) to become the United Farm Workers (UFW). As the union's long-time second vice president, he worked to improve the working conditions of migrant workers.
The Delano grape strike was a labor strike organized by the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), a predominantly Filipino and AFL-CIO-sponsored labor organization, against table grape growers in Delano, California to fight against the exploitation of farm workers. The strike began on September 8, 1965, and one week later, the predominantly Mexican National Farmworkers Association (NFWA) joined the cause. In August 1966, the AWOC and the NFWA merged to create the United Farm Workers (UFW) Organizing Committee.
Jessica Yu is an American film director, writer, producer, and editor. She has directed documentary films, dramatic films, and television shows.
Manong (Mah-noh-ng) is an Ilokano term principally given to the first-born male in a Filipino nuclear family. However, it can also be used to title an older brother, older male cousin, or older male relative in an extended family. The feminine "manang" is a term given to an older sister. It is a term of respect, similar but secondary to Dad or Mom, but not comparable to Mister or Ma'am, which expresses no elevated affection. A hierarchical marker, it is used to refer to any male who is older than the speaker within his or her family but it could also be used for men outside the family to convey respect.
The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival (LAAPFF) – formerly known as VC FilmFest – is an annual film festival presented by Visual Communications (VC). It was established in 1983 by Linda Mabalot as a vehicle to promote Asian Pacific American and Asian international cinema. The festival fulfills a unique mission in illuminating the visions and voices of Asian Pacific peoples and heritage. The festival is held in Los Angeles in May, which is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.
Cesar Chavez Day is a U.S. federal commemorative holiday, proclaimed by President Barack Obama in 2014. The holiday celebrates the birth and legacy of the civil rights and labor movement activist Cesar Chavez on March 31 every year.
Doan Hoang or Đoan Hoàng or Doan Hoàng Curtis is a Vietnamese-American documentary film director, producer, editor, and writer. She directed and produced the 2007 documentary Oh, Saigon about her family, after leaving Vietnam on the last civilian helicopter as Saigon fell. The documentary won several awards at film festivals and was broadcast on PBS from 2008 to 2012, and multiple channels at streaming services. Hoang was selected to be a delegate to Spain for the American Documentary Showcase. Hoang has received awards and grants from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Center for Asian American Media, the Ms. Foundation for Women, Brooklyn Arts Council, and National Endowment of the Humanities.
Mónica Villamizar Villegas is a Colombian American broadcast freelance journalist, working for PBS Newshour, Univision. She was previously a reporter for Vice News, CBS, Al Jazeera English and ABC News.
Hanna Polak is a Polish director, cinematographer and producer. For her short documentary film, The Children of Leningradsky, about a community of homeless children living in the Leningradsky railway station in Moscow, she was nominated for an Academy Award and an Emmy Award. In 2003, she was awarded Best Producer of Documentary Movies at the Kraków Film Festival for Railway Station Ballad.
Modesto "Larry" Dulay Itliong, also known as "Seven Fingers", was a Filipino-American union organizer. He organized West Coast agricultural workers starting in the 1930s, and rose to national prominence in 1965, when he, Philip Vera Cruz, Benjamin Gines and Pete Velasco, walked off the farms of area table-grape growers, demanding wages equal to the federal minimum wage, that became known as the Delano grape strike. He has been described as "one of the fathers of the West Coast labor movement."
Tanuj Chopra is an American film-maker. His debut feature film Punching at the Sun (2006) was screened at the Sundance Film Festival and was also nominated for the Humanitas Prize. He directed the Netflix web series Delhi Crime 2, whose first part was nominated for an International Emmy
Niall McKay is an Irish writer, Emmy-winning director and film curator. He’s the writer/director of a New York based comedy series called On the Lig, a shorts programmer for the Tribeca Film Festival and curator of Irish Screen America, an Irish film festival held at USC in Los Angeles and NYU in New York. McKay is also co-founder of the production company Media Factory.
Dolores is a 2017 American documentary directed by Peter Bratt, on the life of Chicana labor union activist Dolores Huerta. It was produced by Brian Benson for PBS, with Benjamin Bratt and Alpita Patel serving as consulting producers and Carlos Santana as executive producer.
Sher Vancouver is a registered charity in Metro Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer South Asians and their friends. The full name of the organization is the Sher Vancouver LGBTQ Friends Society. The society was originally founded as an online Yahoo group for LGBTQ Sikhs in April 2008 by social worker Alex Sangha of Delta, B.C.
Manilatown was a Filipino American neighborhood in San Francisco, which thrived from the 1920s to late 1970s. The district encompassed a three block radius around Kearny and Jackson Streets, next to Chinatown. The neighborhood was known for the International Hotel, a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel where many of the residents lived. Manilatown was also home to many businesses that catered to the Filipino American community, such as Manila Cafe, New Luneta Cafe, Bataan Lunch, Casa Playa, Sampagita Restaurant, Blanco's Bar, Lucky M. Pool Hall, and Tino's Barber Shop. At its height, over 1000 residents lived in Manilatown, and it contained a total of 30,000 transient laborers. From the late 1960s-70s, the neighborhood was transformed by city initiatives that aimed to gentrify the area. By 1977, the neighborhood had been largely destroyed, and it became part of Chinatown.
The manong generation were the first generation of Filipino immigrants to arrive en masse to the United States. They formed some of the first Little Manila communities in the United States, and they played a pivotal role in the farmworker movement. The term manong comes from the Ilocano word for "elder brother," while manang means "elder sister"; these are derived from Spanish hermano/hermana, meaning "sibling".
Linda Mabalot was a Filipino American filmmaker and community activist who founded the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, also known as the Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival or VC FilmFest. She was the former executive director of Visual Communications, a nonprofit media production organization "dedicated to the honest and accurate portrayals of the Asian Pacific American peoples, communities, and heritage through the media arts" according to their mission.
Anne Poiret is a French journalist and documentary filmmaker. She has won numerous prizes and awards, including the 2007 Albert Londres Prize, the 2022 International Emmy Awards for best documentary, and the 2024 Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Documentary. She focuses on underreported conflicts, investigating a range of topics related to war and post-war situations.
