Saturday, October 21

Part 5: 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Featuring “Shortcomings”

Shortcomings

SHORTCOMINGS

Ben, a struggling filmmaker, lives in Berkeley, California, with his girlfriend, Miko, who works for a local Asian American film festival. When he’s not managing an arthouse movie theater as his day job, Ben spends his time obsessing over unavailable blonde women, watching Criterion Collection DVDs, and eating in diners with his best friend Alice, a queer grad student with a serial dating habit. When Miko moves to New York for an internship, Ben is left to his own devices, and begins to explore what he thinks he might want.

Q&A GUESTS

  • Stephanie Yang

    Stephanie Yang - Moderator

    Stephanie Yang is a senior communications consultant and founder of Yang Communications, a tech PR consultancy that works primarily with venture-backed startups across artificial intelligence, digital healthcare, and the future of work. Prior to working in Silicon Valley, Stephanie was a Hollywood studio publicist working on films including THE NOTEBOOK, the Academy Award-winning trilogy The LORD OF THE RINGS, and the sport documentary LINSANITY.

  • Jeffrey Lo

    Jeffrey Lo - Panelist

    Jeffrey Lo is a Filipino-American playwright and director based in the Bay Area. The winner of the Leigh Weimers Emerging Artist Award, his recent directing credits include The Language Archive and a Chinatown set Little Shop of Horrors at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley, The Great Leap and Vietgone at Capital Stage Company and The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin and Hold These Truths at San Francisco Playhouse.

  • Eric Toda

    Eric Toda - Panelist

    Eric is a marketing executive, angel investor, and active advocate for the Asian American community. Eric is currently the Head of Meta Prosper, a new community support program for the API community from Meta and Global Head of Social Marketing at Meta.

  • Yvonne Kwan

    Yvonne Kwan - Panelist

    Yvonne Y. Kwan is an associate professor of and program coordinator for Asian American Studies at San Jose State University. Kwan also served as the previous Director of the Ethnic Studies Collaborative at SJSU, in which she led efforts in the implementation of the California State University Ethnic Studies Graduation (AB 1460) Requirement. She teaches classes on Asian American history, media representation and pop culture, oral history, and more. In 2021, Kwan was lead organizer of the Southeast Asian American Studies Conference. Her research explores how social trauma may not be verbalized or articulated, but yet children of survivors can still develop the capacity to both identify with and experience the pain of previous generations. Kwan is also the Lead PI on a multi-year Santa Clara County research collaboration that seeks to document the oral histories of local Asian American activists.