Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson’s The Sugar Bowl will be screening at the AmerAsia Film Festival in Montreal this March! The Sugar Bowl premiered at Reel Asian in 2011 as part of the Trailblazers Shorts Program.

In celebration of LIFT‘s 30th anniversary they have commissioned 30 filmmakers to make new works on or in the spirit of 8mm. Among the filmmakers are Reel Asian’s own Nobu Adilman (A+ on January 21), Midi Onodera (The Grand Design on January 20) and Heather Keung (Lifting for 30 on January 19). All films will be screened at AGO’s Jackman Hall. More info here.

Vancouver Codes by Douglas Coupland is the 8th work in the yearlong 10 Seconds project curated by RA filmmaker Paul Wong.  10 Seconds is presented by On Main in partnership with InTransitBC.  Paul was Reel Asian’s Canadian Spotlight artist in 2008.

Inspired after watching Kim’s Convenience by Ins Choi last year, Mingu Kim is currently working on Corner Store, a documentary for Omni about the significance of convenience stores which has settled Korean Canadian immigrants in Canada for over 30 years.  In the 1970s, Korean immigrants took over convenience stores to feed their families and educate their children.  Now that the first generations are preparing to retire, the film will explore what the future holds for these stores.  Mingu was a So You Think You Can Pitch? finalist in 2010 and screened his doc A Drummer’s Passion last year as part of Reel Asian’s wildly popular Trailblazers Shorts Program. Mingu is currently looking for Korean convenience store owners to interview for his doc. If you are interested, please contact Mingu at mingukim80@gmail.com.