Asian Pacific American Heritage Month just around the corner, the APICC staff is hard at work preparing United States of Asian America Festival 2016 for May. What better way to get the festival going than grabbing a drink at the USAAF 2016 KICK-OFF.

Come and pick up the freshly printed FESTIVAL CALENDER and program, chat with FESTIVAL ARTISTS and participants about their upcoming events, and order a few of f8's delicious DRINKS and BITES. 

RSVP on the Facebook event page.
The event is FREE and open to the public. We hope to see you all there!

As part of the national speaking tour, "Lakbay Lumad USA: The Continuing Journey of Mindanao's Indigenous Peoples for Peace with Justice", The International Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (ICHRP) present “San Francisco to Salupongan”. This evening will feature a discussion and cultural offering by delegates from the Lumad (indigenous) communities who are fighting for their human rights, cultural preservation and self-determination in the Philippines. It will feature cultural performances from several local artists.

This evening is also a direct opportunity for our local community to learn more about the indigenous people’s struggle in the Philippines and how it relates to our struggles of displacement and gentrification in the Bay Area. We will learn how we in the United States can further support our Lumad communities.

The Lumad are the largest conglomerate of indigenous tribes in the Southern Mindanao region of the Philippines. Like many indigenous groups throughout the world, they have been struggling to maintain their ancestral domains as well as their right to self-determination. For decades, the Lumad have resisted the plunder of their lands by transnational corporations and others who wish to extract and exploit the land for its natural resources. Their resistance has led to an intensification of human rights violations, as well as the militarization of their communities.

Through education, advocacy and international solidarity, we can advance the rights of the Lumad people. By building bridges between the issues impacting our local communities in the US and abroad, we can work together to build a more just world for all people.

Performances by:
Kulintang Friends of the Bay Area

This evening is presented by:
API Cultural Center- San Francisco as part of the USAAF 2016: Civil Dis(place)ment festival

Endorsed by:
Filipino Community Center, Kularts, Gabriela SF, Ichrp Norcal, AROC: Arab Resource & Organizing Center, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition Bay Area, Salupongan International, West Bay Pilipino Multi-Service Center, Trust Your Struggle, Philippine Studies Department - CCSF, Pin@y Educational Partnerships

Online Price:
$15 General Admission
$10 College Students / Seniors
$5 Middle School / High School Students

$8 tickets for 10-person minimum groups
ex. $80 for 10 tickets, $120 for 15 tickets

At-The-Door Prices:
General - $20-50 (Sliding Scale)
Youth/Student - $10

 An art exhibition, curated by Asian American Women Artists Association's Emerging Curators Program fellow Kelsay Meyers, that uses identity construction as a means to engage the audience in a 3-D collage of several artworks in various mediums and writing by largely Asian American women artists who have something significant to say about the importance of female identity in our contemporary world.

AESTHETIC BLITZ is an exhibition in which female artists and poets of mostly Asian American ethnicity showcase work that is central to not only who they are as an artist, but who they are as a person in a large scale collage-like form. The concept of an “aesthetic blitzkrieg” is born out of the way that our minds process identity. We latch onto an image, symbol or word and make it our own in ways that are wholly personal to the individual creator, and this occurs in rapid succession. By presenting all work in a collage-like structure, where things overlap or layer in ways that still preserve the integrity of each art piece in itself, and visually inundate the audience with aestheticism—it’s as if it’s an actual explosion of things that are fragmented and connected in new ways. This exhibition celebrates how we come to know ourselves: as Asians, as women, as people!

Exhibition: Wednesday, May 4th @ 1- Saturday, June 25th

Opening Reception: Wednesday, May 4th @ 3:30 - 7:30 PM

CURATOR
Kelsay Elizabeth Myers

FEATURED ARTISTS & WRITERS
Jade Acosta | Samina Ali | Jasmine An | Joanne Billiet | Sabrina Brett | Kira Donnell | Joyce Mortel Familara | Gillian Hamel | C.K.Itamura | Susan Ito | Rupinder Kahlon | Kyungsook Moir | Nivedita Ojha | Pallavi Sharma | Raena Shirali | Shizue Seigel | Jennifer Sinquefield | Cynthia Tom | Sue Tom | Nathalie Vanderlinden | Manon Bogerd Wada | Laura Ming Wong | Nellie Wong | Shelley Wong

AAWAA.NET

This exhibit is created and designed by students from Asian American Studies 516: Asian American Photographic Explorations, which is taught at San Francisco State University by Prof. Valerie Soe. Each student chooses one Asian American person who is important to them and makes a photographic tribute to that person.

Exhibition: Wednesday, May 11th - Monday, May 16th @ 12 - 5 PM

Opening Reception: Tuesday, May 10th @ 7 - 9 PM

Free Event

518VALENCIA.ORG

A preview and talk with filmmakers who highlight the Bay Areas most underserved and underrepresented communities as part of API Cultural Center’s premiere film program, Cinematic SF.

Albeit a constantly evolving landscape, San Francisco remains a city rich with character, culture and conflict. To capture the untold stories of San Francisco’s underserved and underrepresented communities caught in such conflict, the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center (APICC) will be commissioning a collection of locally made short films and creating a cinematic mural of the enduring experiences SF residents most challenged by a myriad of social inequities and obstacles. APICC invites the public to the CINEMATIC SF: COMMUNITY PREVIEW to meet the selected filmmakers, screen their previous works, and discuss their upcoming endeavors to film the vivid and yet contradictory place and culture that is San Francisco.

Featured filmmakers include: Elizabeth Lo, RJ Lozada, Abhi Singh, and Jimmy Zhang.

Presented by APICC

Community Partners:

Center for Asian America Media

$8 -$10 Suggested Donation

APICULTURALCENTER.ORG

Funders:

Celebrating the Fil-Am mobile DJ crews of the Bay Area, co-presented by Bindlestiff Studio. Featuring a panel moderated by author Oliver Wang with live demos from DJ luminaries and an Interactive theater experience and party, true to the era. Music, food, and dancing.

The Panel discussion on May 13th will highlight aspects of the book with special attention given to USAAF's theme of Civil Dis(place)ment. Moderated by the book's author, Oliver Wang, with live DJ demonstrations featuring: Ralph Restauro of Sound Explosion, Gary (Genie G) Millare of Ultimate Creations, Liza Dizon and Amy Gramlich of The Go-Go’s.

Panel: Friday, May 13 @ 8 PM

FREE EVENT

Party: Saturday, May 14, @ 8 PM

$25

BINDLESTIFFSTUDIO.ORG

Celebrating the Fil-Am mobile DJ crews of the Bay Area, co-presented by Bindlestiff Studio. Featuring a panel moderated by author Oliver Wang with live demos from DJ luminaries and an Interactive theater experience and party, true to the era. Music, food, and dancing.

The Party on May 14th will re-create the kind of event for which mobile DJ crews might have spun. During the immersive, interactive performance, attendees will be transported to a Filipino family party circa 1988 as a rival DJ crew crashes the party in order to settle a score. Dress to impress (big hair, pegged pants, and Adidas track suits encouraged).

Panel: Friday, May 13 @ 8 PM

FREE EVENT

Party: Saturday, May 14, @ 8 PM

$25

BINDLESTIFFSTUDIO.ORG

Co-presented by Asian American Women Artists Association. A group visual art exhibition featuring 20 assemblage artworks that showcase the vibrant dreams and hopes of women. Curator Cynthia Tom, driven by an abiding passion to spotlight issues facing Asian American women, has developed an artistic forum to heal, transform, and inform. The product of  a series of workshops based on intuitive art practices and meditation that inspired the art. Audiences have the opportunity to tap into their inner wisdom and personal strengths through hands-on art-making with three intuitive, self-guided art-making workstations.

Exhibition: Thursday, May 19th - Thursday, June 30th

Opening Reception: Thursday, May 19th  @ 6 - 8:30 PM

$10 - $20 Donation Suggested

Artists’ Talk: Tuesday, May 31st @ 5:30 - 8:30 PM

Closing Reception: Thursday, June 30 @ 5:30-8:30 PM

APLACEOFHEROWN.ORG

With Marshall Trammell and Lama Pema Tenzin. A sonogram is a graph representing a sound, which shows the distribution of energy at different frequencies or a visual image produced from an ultrasound, as routinely used to monitor fetuses in pregnancies. Taking this science into the realm of music and voice, Black Geomancy and Tantric (G)hosts, explores the interaction of space and energy through the synergy of sound: music, poetry, voice, Buddhist chants and prayers in synchronicity.

$15 (General Advance)

$20 (General Door)

http://www.sfiaf.org/genny_lim_and_marshall_trannell

A thematic storytelling show featuring local Asian and Asian American raconteurs, performers, and comedians who will unfold narratives based on a theme! Listen in as storytellers of diverse backgrounds and upbringings find cultural commonality on stage.

$10 (Early Bird)

$15 (General)

THECOLOSSALSHOW.COM

A music work in progress by Jon Jang in collaboration with poet performer Amanda Kemp. Organized into seven vignettes named after each black victim group killed by the police and/or white supremacists this past year: Eric Garner, John Crawford III, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, nine victims of the Emmanuel AME Church, and Sandra Bland. The final vignette, Five Young Black Men, will memorialize Emmett Till, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, John Powell, and Mario Woods.

Tickets: General Admission
$20 Advance, $25 Door

Reserved Table Seating
$25 Advance, $30 Door

Front Row Reserved Seating
$30 Advance, $35 Door

http://www.sfiaf.org/jon_jang_quintet

KSW revisits its roots with former Executive Director, Nancy Hom, leading a panel of KSW authors and artists from the 70s and 80s as they discuss the history of its publishing wing and the decorated roster of titles that were released by KSW Press. The home of beloved local authors like Genny Lim, the late Jeff Tagami, Jaime Jacinto, and Virginia Cerenio, KSW Press also published books of photography and literary anthologies that document a vibrant era of Asian American art in San Francisco. The panel will be followed by an intergenerational reading and performance.

Free Event

KEARNYSTREET.ORG

Celebrating the enduring spirit of the African American and Japanese American communities in the face of racial discrimination, segregation, redevelopment and gentrification. Presented as part of API Cultural Center's 19th annual United States of Asian America Festival 2016.

Readings, music and visual art by community writers, performers and artists explore the overlapping history of African Americans, Japanese Americans and others in neighborhoods deeply eroded by the displacements of WWII, urban renewal and gentrification. How has displacement impacted ordinary people? What do they remember of the old days? What do they treasure? What are their challenges today? What keeps them going, and what can they teach us?

Our community spirit still burns brightly, though our neighborhoods have been scattered by incarceration, red-lining and blight, and the wholesale demolition of 100 blocks of housing and businesses. Destruction came quickly; renewal came much too slowly. Today, gentrification endangers our churches, community resources, family-run businesses and close-knit networks.

Members of Shizue Seigel’s Write Now! Japantown and Write Now! Fillmore writing workshops will read from the Standing Strong! Fillmore and Japantown community anthology. Singer/songwriter Kimi Sugioka will perform, and a slideshow will showcase works by Japantown and Fillmore artists Shari DeBoer, Rodney Ewing, Mark Harris, Shizue Seigel, and Malik Seneferu.

Join us afterwards to meet the writers and purchase the 140-page Standing Strong! Fillmore and Japantown anthology ($20 including tax).

The event is supported by a San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Arts Commission and the Asian Pacific Island Cultural Center. It is sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco African American Historical & Cultural Society.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS PARTICIPATING WRITERS AND ARTISTS:

Shizue Seigel

Sandra Bass

Joyce Brady

Anthony Brown

Ravi Chandra

Machiko M. Conway

Alex Damron

Shari DeBoer

Charles Dixon

Lyndsey Ellis

Rodney Ewing

Jennifer Hasegawa

Mary Ann Hori

Susan Kitazawa

Xiomara Larkin

Aqueila M. Lewis

Juanitia Tamayo Lott

Grace Morizawa

Roji Oyama

J. Lisa Oyama

Ernestine Patterson

Malik Seneferu

Juanda Stewart

Kimi Sugioka

Kenji Taguma

Sheridan Tatsuno

Landa Williams

Tamiko Wong

Queennandi X

Michiko Yamada

Sandra Yamakishi

Free Event

STANDINGSTRONGSF.WORDPRESS.COM

Internationally touring author and spoken word artist, Jason Bayani, explores the narrative of the fourth-wave Filipino immigrant through poetry, storytelling, and performance. Drawing upon nearly twenty years of work, Bayani pieces together the story of the latest and most robust wave of migrants to come from the Philippines and contemplates what this identity has become in America and what it will become in the future.

Friday, May 27th - Saturday, 28th @ 8 - 10 PM

$10 (Pre-Sale)

$12 (General)

$ 20 (Supporter)

JASONBAYANI.COM

A play by Eugenie Chan and directed by Jessica Heidt.  Inspired by the life of the playwright’s great-grandmother, Madame Ho tells the story of a formidable Barbary Coast San Francisco brothel madam, single mother, Chinese immigrant, and ghost. A tale of of survival and complicity. In English with a Cantonese narration.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Eugenie Chan, Playwright
Jessica Heidt, Director
Sonia Fernandez, Dramaturg
Featuring Actors — Katherine Chin, Monica Ho, Lisa Hori-Garcia, Gwen Loeb,
Josephine Ma, Randall Nakano, Erin Mei-Ling Stuart, Mia Tagano, Mimu Tsujimura, Ogie Zulueta

$10 Suggested Donation

No one turned away due to lack of funds at the door

CHSA.ORG/EVENT/MADAME-HO 

Nancy Wang of Eth-Noh-Tec, kinetic storytelling theater, will wrestle the tricky but tried and true White Rabbit, Red Rabbit play written by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour as part of the SF International Performing Arts Festival 2016.

$15 (Advance)

$20 (Door)

http://www.sfiaf.org/white_rabbit_red_rabbit_nancy_wang

Film screenings created through QWOCMAP’s programs in addition to films by independent filmmakers from around the world. A theater full of friends and family who are gathering to not only watch a film together, but to experience something new, to think differently, build community, and to participate in deep, lasting social change.

APICC is a proud Community Partner of QWOCMAP's Filmmaker Roundtable: Exponential Hustle

Film builds power. It can reinforce bias or amplify the voices of the unheard. It is also the most expensive art form in the world. The high costs of filmmaking equate to de facto censorship. Join independent queer women of color and transgender people of color filmmakers as they discuss the impact of money, the magic needed to create authentic images of our vulnerable communities, and making a livelihood as a filmmaker.

QWOCMAP.ORG/FESTIVAL

ABOUT THE LAUNCH PARTY
To celebrate the gayness of June and Queer Fuckery, API Cultural Center- San Francisco and Bindlestiff Studio invites you to the launch party for the #QueerasFuck festival.

Join us Saturday, June 11th for an evening of art, music, comedy, and drag!


FEATURED ARTISTS
Singer/songwriter Caroline Calderon
Comedians Irene Tu and Justin Lucas
Solo Performer Tatiana Chaterji
Drag by Kristi Yummykochi of Rice Rockettes
Tunes by DJ SlumB
Hosted by the comedy genius known as The Kat Evasco

Visual Artist special gallery opening with Althea Solis


TICKETS
$15 Support the Artists
$10 General Admission
$7 Student Admission

**No one is turned away for lack of funds.

www.facebook.com/queerasfckfest

URBAN x INDIGENOUS (UxI) is a multi-disciplinary, inter-generational convening of artists, activists, incubators, scholars, and community members to honor our ancestors in a society which is driven by the act of leaving them behind. Envisioned by "hip hop dance artist and indigenous arts advocate," Samantha "SAMMAY" Dizon, this event invites the next generation of movers, shakers, and believers to remember those who lived before us so that we may breathe in the life force of today. In its second year, UxI will explore the theme "Remember Our Place?" which speaks to the dismal hxstory of native peoples being forced out of their lands while calling out the modern-day exodus, popularly known as gentrification. Through performance activation, visual arts exhibition, and cyphers - UxI will uncover the state of the Pilipin@ community's displacement in San Francisco and draw parallels to the homebased struggle of the Lumads in Mindanao, Philippines. Together, we will ask the questions which spark and cultivate an inclusive space of dialogue and exploration where we will deepen our understanding of the injustice that has been done to our people - from Mindanao to the Bay Area. 

URBAN x INDIGENOUS: Remember Our Place? will take place on Sunday, June 12, 2016 at SOMArts Bay Gallery - presented by Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center with support from SOMArts Cultural Center as part of the 19th Annual United States of Asian America Festival: Civil Dis(place)ment.

Centered on the API-experience but in alliance with all indigenous peoples, URBAN x INDIGENOUS aims to unite cultural and urban performance-based artists and strengthen the network of urban-indigenous artists towards collective action through arts as activism.

EXHIBITING VISUAL ARTISTS:
Alan Khum
Alex Abalos
Baltazar Dasalla
Cece Carpio
Da'ko'ta Alcantara-Camacho
Diana Li
David Petrelli
Dumay Solinggay
Elaine Chu
Johanna Javier
Keke Brown
Kim Vigilante
Laila Espinoza
Monica Magtoto
Nicole Gervacio
Nikila Badua
Samantha Javier Curl
Spencer Wilkinson
Toi Wāhine Collective
Topher Maka
Vincent Escareno

PERFORMANCE ACTIVATIONS BY:
AstraLogik
Makha & Tria Blu Wakpa
Gerardo Omar Marin
Gingee
HATAW
Kaley Isabella
Kanyon Sayers-Roods
Kimmortal
Kristine Sinajon & Kulintronica
JoAnna Ursal
Parangal Dance Company
SPULU
UxI Collective

General Admission $10
Support the Artist $20

Interested in volunteering/vendoring/sponsoring at this year's UxI? Drop us a line at [email protected]!

Please help us spread the word and increase our visibility by clicking "like" and sharing our Facebook Page. More info on last year's event and what to expect this year - please visit: urbanxindigenous.wordpress.com

--

URBAN x INDIGENOUS is supported by the SOMArts Cultural Center’s Affordable Space Program, which provides subsidized, large-scale affordable space and technical assistance to nonprofits. SOMArts receives support from the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Community Arts and Education Program with funding from Grants for the Arts/The Hotel Tax Fund.

The mission of SOMArts is to promote and nurture art on the community level and foster an appreciation of and respect for all cultures. To find out about SOMArts classes, events and exhibitions, please visitwww.somarts.org.

 We are all future ancestors. What will you want to preserve? The queer dimensions of San Francisco—a city culturally unique and multigenerational—holds wisdom. Gentrification is affecting people's sense of place and belonging and pulls away cultures of rootedness.

Roots in Resilience Film Festival showcases how people from communities of color in San Francisco claim agency to the places they call home. The festival displays the work of artists, youth, residents and community members who explore intergenerational blessings in their communities. In order to understand blessings, they fearlessly attempt to also recognize struggle. Festival includes experimental, narrative and documentary shorts--all voice the power of rootedness. Our roots.

$3 suggested donation

*The film festival will be held the Bayview Opera House's temporary gallery space while the venue is under renovation.

SF-ROOTS.COM

QTPOC mixed heritage artists through dance, music, acrobatics and poetry reveal and embody themselves as bearers and creators of spiritual traditions and ancestral practices that empower and resist oppression. Conjuring Roots reveals these practices and honors the tools used to support and transform.

$12 - $20 Sliding Scale

https://www.facebook.com/events/833328473480611/