Screen Actors Guild Honors Members Featured in SAG Films at the
25th Annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
SAG to Announce New Report on the
Asian Pacific Islander Market and the Entertainment Industry
Los Angeles (April 30, 2009) – Screen Actors Guild is kicking off Asian Pacific American Heritage Month by sponsoring the 25th Annual Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and celebrating SAG members starring in the festival films “Children of Invention,” "Dim Sum Funeral” and “White on Rice.”
"SAG is proud to honor three signatory films that are enhanced by our professional Asian and Pacific Islander performers," said SAG Ethnic Employment Opportunities National Committee Chair Sumi Haru. Haru was the first and only Asian Pacific American to serve as a national vice president of the AFL-CIO, a position she held for six years.
The Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival runs April 30 – May 07 at the Directors Guild of America and features films, documentaries and shorts that share the stories of Asian Pacifics in America and abroad. On Saturday, May 2, SAG Ethnic Employment Opportunities Committee will co-host a reception at the DGA at 6 p.m., honoring the actors featured in SAG signatory films at this year’s festival, along with the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment (CAPE), and Visual Communications.
At the reception, SAG Affirmative Action & Diversity will announce its newest commissioned study, “From Dollars & Sense to Screen: The Asian Pacific Islander Market and the Entertainment Industry.” “With one of the fastest growing population rates and some of the highest annual household incomes, Asian Pacific Islander (API) consumers have become one of the most lucrative market segments in the world,” said Rebecca Yee, national director of SAG Affirmative Action & Diversity. “For a market so ripe with opportunity, however, the entertainment industry has been slow to target and cultivate the API demographic, and representations of API images in U.S. film and television are disproportionately below its representative share of the general population. What this report shows is that there are consumers hungry for more visible and accurate portrayals of the world’s diversity.”
“The Asian and Pacific Islander demographic is a market that has yet been fully explored with regards to film, television, commercial and new media productions,” said Laverne McKinnon, president of the CAPE board of directors. “Heads of studios and production houses are now witnessing and recognizing the untapped potential within the API markets.”
To read the Screen Actors Guild report once it is released, visit: http://www.sag.org/content/studies-and-reports
For festival information and screening schedule, visit http://www.vconline.org/festival/ for film dates and times.
To interview SAG Ethnic Employment Opportunities National Committee Chair Sumi Haru, or National Director of SAG Affirmative Action & Diversity Rebecca Yee, please contact Pamela Greenwalt, (323)549-6872, pgreenwalt@sag.org
About SAG
About SAG: Screen Actors Guild is the nation’s largest labor union representing working actors. Established in 1933, SAG has a rich history in the American labor movement, from standing up to studios to break long-term engagement contracts in the 1940s to fighting for artists’ rights amid the digital revolution sweeping the entertainment industry in the 21st century. With 20 branches nationwide, SAG represents nearly 120,000 actors who work in motion pictures, television, industrials, commercials, video games, music videos and all new media formats. The Guild exists to enhance actors’ working conditions, compensation and benefits and to be a powerful, unified voice on behalf of artists’ rights. SAG is a proud affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Headquartered in Los Angeles, you can visit SAG online at www.sag.org.
Follow SAG Communications on Twitter at http://twitter.com/pgreenwalt and check out our Facebook Group at www.facebook.com.
Contact:
Pamela Greenwalt
(323)549-6872
pgreenwalt@sag.org
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