Beau Gomez • Gallery and Programs Coordinator, Critical Distance Centre for Curators

Beau Gomez is a Filipino-Canadian artist and community arts worker. His practice is informed by ideas and conversations around cross-cultural narratives, and equally devotes his time in community engagement through the arts, with contributions to various organizations including Trinity Square Video, The 519, Workman Arts, and Inside Out LGBT Film Festival. In 2019, Beau launched Fixer, a gathering of image-makers and creators in an engaged discussion and critique of recent works in progress. He is currently the Gallery and Programs Coordinator at Critical Distance Centre for Curators.

Katrina Cohen-Palacios • Archivist, Home Made Visible

Katrina Cohen-Palacios processed the archival collection of IBPOC home movies donated by the Home Made Visible project, a participatory archival project which empowered IBPOC communities to describe their own records. She is an Archivist at the York University Libraries Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections.

Vasuki Shanmuganathan • Researcher and Community Organizer, Tamil Archive Project

Vasuki Shanmuganathan is a researcher, educator, and community organizer working at the intersections of race and colonialism. She is a research associate on the Race, Ethics & Power Project at the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics. She is the founder of the Tamil Archive Project (TAP). A Scarborough-born collective prioritizing non-binary people and women from racialized communities which emerged out of a need for makeshift spaces of belonging by reconfiguring contemporary art and archival practices as part of communal care.

Vince Ha • Filmmaker and Curator, Invisible Footprints

Vince Ha is a writer-director who captures fragmentary moments and uses them to challenge issues of race, class, gender, and representation. He holds an MFA in Documentary Media. His work has been presented locally at Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival, Gardiner Museum, Buddies in Bad Times, The ArQuives, and Hot Docs Rogers Cinema, and internationally in China, Germany, Japan, Thailand, United Kingdom, the United States, and Vietnam.

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Aram Siu Wai Collier • Head of Programming, Reel Asian

Aram Siu Wai Collier is a filmmaker, educator, and film festival programmer. He has a background in documentary, editing the award-winning feature documentary Refugee and directing/editing the short doc Who I Became. His subsequent dramatic and experimental film work has played festivals in the United States, Canada, Japan, and China. From 2011-2014, his omnibus live music and film project Suite Suite Chinatown toured Canada, Asia, and the United States. In 2017, he wrote, directed, edited, and produced the feature film Stand Up Man, which had its World premiere at the Atlantic Film Festival and its International Premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Most recently Aram directed and edited the award-winning short documentary A Sweet & Sour Christmas for CBC. He is currently the Head of Programming at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and teaches Media Production at Humber College.

Spencer Nakasako • Director

Spencer Nakasako has over three decades of experience as an independent filmmaker. He won a National Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, the video diary of a Cambodian refugee teenager that aired on the PBS series P.O.V. and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Kelly Loves Tony, a video diary about a Iu Mien refugee teenage couple growing up too fast in Oakland, California, also aired on P.O.V. His third film in his trilogy about Southeast Asian youth, Refugee, aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, and garnered major awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival and Hamptons Film Festival. Nakasako is the founder of the ground-breaking Media Lab at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District where he collaborated with youth from the neighborhood on filmmaking for 17 years.

Miko Revereza • Filmmaker

Miko Revereza is a filmmaker raised in California and currently residing between several countries. His upbringing as an undocumented immigrant in the United States informs his relationship with moving images. DROGA! (2014), DISINTEGRATION 93-96 (2017), No data plan (2018) and Distancing (2019) have widely screened at festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NYFF Projections and Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Aside from these films, Revereza produces expanded cinema, direct animation, performance, criticism and publishing including works such as Biometrics (2018), Live Cinema (2019-2020) and Towards a Stateless Cinema (2019). Revereza is listed as Filmmaker Magazine’s 2018 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema, a 2019 Flaherty Seminar featured filmmaker and MFA graduate at Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He is a 2021 recipient of the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking.

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Anita Li • Media strategist, Consultant and Instructor, The Other Wave

Anita Li is a media strategist and consultant with a decade of experience as a multi-platform journalist at outlets across North America. She is also a journalism instructor in the Greater Toronto Area and at the City University of New York; her areas of expertise include community-driven journalism, audience engagement, audience-pay business models, newsroom diversity, media ethics and journalism innovation. Anita co-founded Canadian Journalists of Colour in 2018, and is also a member of the 2020-21 Online News Association board of directors.

Rignam Wangkhang • Producer, CBC Creator Network

Rignam Wangkhang is an award-winning Tibetan-Canadian multimedia producer with the CBC. He is currently a Producer at the CBC Creator Network, which seeks to improve the relevancy of the public broadcaster by discovering and developing the work of independent filmmakers and digital content creators across Canada. He serves as the Chair DiversifyCBC, an Employee Resource Group that represents over 350 people of colour to advocate for diversity and inclusion at the CBC. He is also a founding member of the Chyssem Project, an oral history project showcasing and celebrating the 50-year immigration story of Tibetan-Canadians. Rignam has produced documentaries, essays, and reported for the CBC from Yellowknife, Winnipeg, and Toronto.

Zach Feldberg • Programmer, CBC Digital Originals 

Zach Feldberg oversees the YA Digital Originals programming slate, developing and commissioning series for CBC Gem, the public broadcaster’s streaming service. In his time at the broadcaster so far, he has overseen such titles as Warigami, The 410, Farm Crime, My 90-Year-Old Roommate, Save Me, The Neddeaus of Duqesne Island, Coming In, the Emmy-nominated series The Amazing Gayl Pile, How to Buy a Baby, and many more.

Uytae Lee • Filmmaker, About Here

Uytae Lee produces videos that inform and engage the public on the complex issues surrounding our cities. His videos on his YouTube channel “About Here” have been viewed hundreds of thousands of times, helping raise awareness on topics such as housing, skytrains, street food, and much more. In addition to his YouTube channel, Uytae produces a column with CBC Vancouver under the same name where he challenges audiences to ‘rethink’ their city.

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Marsya Maharani & Petrina Ng • Gendai 

Throughout its 20-year history, Gendai has supported experimental curatorial and organizational practices. Originally founded as Gendai Gallery, the organization created space for East Asian artists and artists of colour. As the new stewards of Gendai, Marsya Maharani and Petrina Ng are building upon the organization’s legacy of decentering whiteness by investing in the future of BIPOC arts leadership through collective research and practice.

Niki Little • Artistic Director, ImagineNative

Niki Little(Anishininew) is an artist/observer and a founding member of The Ephemerals. She is the Artistic Director at imagineNATIVE, CAN. Before, she was the Director of the National Indigenous Media Arts Coalition organizing Listen, Witness, Transmit (2018). Little and Becca Taylor co-curated the 2018 La Biennale d’Art Contemporain Autochtone and co-hosted an on the land residency Migration, Demmitt, AB (August, 2018). Little was part of Nests for the End of the World (2020), Art Gallery of with collaborator Bruno Canadien

Julian Carrington • Programmer, Hot Docs and Planet in Focus

Julian Carrington is a funds programmer and Distribution Manager at Hot Docs. In addition to administering Hot Docs’ film funds, he oversees the Festival’s distribution marketplace, including the Distribution Rendezvous pitch meeting program, and the Doc Shop. Julian also currently serves as a film programmer with Toronto’s Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival. Previously, he acted as an associate programmer with the Toronto International Film Festival, and, from 2015 to 2017, managed the Documentary Organization of Canada’s Festival Concierge service.

Indu Vashist • Cultural Worker, SAVAC

Indu Vashist has served as the Executive Director of SAVAC since 2013. She is interested in art that is not precious and words that are precise.

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Justine Abigail Yu • Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Living Hyphen

Justine Abigail Yu is the founder of Living Hyphen, a community that explores what it means to live in between cultures. She is an award-winning writing workshop facilitator whose work with Living Hyphen has been featured on national and local media outlets including CTV National News, CBC Metro Morning, Radio-Canada International, CBC Ontario Morning, CityTV’s Breakfast Television, and City News. Justine Abigail is a fierce advocate for diversity and equity in Canada’s arts and literature scene.

Hannah Sung • Journalist

Hannah Sung is a journalist, currently working in podcast and newsletter production and strategy. Previously, she worked at the Globe and Mail, TVO, MuchMusic and was the Asper Fellow in Journalism at University of Western Ontario in 2020. She writes the newsletter At The End Of The Day at endoftheday.ca

Khanh Tudo • Programmer, Insomniac Film Festival

Khanh Tudo spends most of their days between organizing Insomniac Film Festival, working in the lighting department on sets, hanging out with their 1-year-old niece, and in various garages working on installation sculptures. Khanh is constantly drawn to DIY projects that invoke chaos, and laughter. Currently Marie Kondo-ing their room for the 100th time this year.

Neha Kohli • Comedian, Actor and Screenwriter

Neha Kohli recently quit her job of being an accountant to pursue my dreams of not being an accountant (read: screenwriter, comedian, actor, post-secondary instructor, board member at Ukai). Neha is a graduate of Second City’s Conservatory Program and recipient of the 2018 NBC Diversity Fellowship. Neha was part of the cast of the critically acclaimed 2019 Toronto Fringe Show, Woke ‘N Broke. Neha co-wrote and starred in the Luminari ad I Am A CPA – Rant (that went viral…with accountants).

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Atif Khan • Researcher and Curator

Atif Khan is an emerging writer and artist exploring text, image and curatorial practice. Their research-driven practice intersects key themes of war, surveillance, death and visual studies. Broadly, the work thinks through how the word “violence” is assembled and given power in the material world by connecting objects, language, words, meaning and a specific set of archives. Khan’s broader research investigates the use of militarized drones across the United States, Somalia, Afghanistan & Pakistan.

Madiha Tahir • Journalist and Filmmaker

Madiha Tahir is a postdoctoral scholar researching transnational militarisms, drone warfare, and surveillance. She is currently conducting a project on militarism and political violence at Columbia University’s Brown Institute for Media Innovation. She is a former journalist, a documentary filmmaker (Wounds of Waziristan), and the co-founder of Tanqeed, a bilingual zine of politics & culture. Tahir is also the co-editor of a book of critical essays, Dispatches from Pakistan.

Nasra Mohamed • Youth Community Advocate

Nasra Mohamed is a resident of the Jane Finch Community. She recently graduated from York University’s Urban Studies and Sociology program and takes interest in challenging Urban issues that impact low-income racialized communities such as over-policing, transit-oriented gentrification and housing.

mashal khan • Multimedia Artist

mashal khan is a multi-media artist who was born in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and along with her family immigrated to Turtle Island in 2002. mashal graduated from the University of Toronto with a hon. bachelor’s of arts in equity studies, sociology and art. she values freedom, justice and equity. within her work she hopes to subvert the white and/or male gaze that has often spoken on behalf of marginalized women of colour.

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Co-presented by

Marsya Maharani & Petrina Ng  • Gendai

Throughout its 20-year history, Gendai has supported experimental curatorial and organizational practices. Originally founded as Gendai Gallery, the organization created space for East Asian artists and artists of colour. As the new stewards of Gendai, Marsya Maharani and Petrina Ng are building upon the organization’s legacy of decentering whiteness by investing in the future of BIPOC arts leadership through collective research and practice.

Eui Yong Zong  • Editor

Eui Yong Zong is an award-winning filmmaker and editor whose directorial works have screened at TIFF Student Showcase, Hot Docs, Montreal World Film Fest, CamFest, Reel Asian, CBC Canadian Reflections and many others. His editing credit includes: Over Time (Bravo Factual), I Hold the Decho in My Heart (CBC), MerB’ys (CBC) and One of Ours (Documentary Channel).

Lesley Loksi Chan  • Filmmaker

Lesley Loksi Chan works in the fields of media arts and arts education. Her films and videos have been exhibited in galleries and festivals internationally. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Women’s Studies and M.F.A. in Film Production.

Anne Koizumi • Filmmaker

Anne Koizumi completed her undergraduate studies in Film Production at the University of British Columbia and her master’s in film production at York University in 2011.  In 2006, she was invited by the National Film Board of Canada to participate in Hothouse 3, an animation intensive for emerging animators, where she completed her first professional film, A Prairie Story. Her films have screened nationally and internationally at Annecy International Animation Festival, Slamdance, Animation Nation in Singapore, WNDX and the Calgary International Film Festival. Anne has taught stop-motion animation workshops at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hospitals and Community Centres throughout Toronto, Quickdraw Animation Society in Calgary and for National Film Board of Canada in Montreal.

Joyce Wong • Filmmaker

Joyce Wong is an award-winning director and writer. She has directed episodes of TV shows such as WORKIN’ MOMS (CBC/Netflix) and BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW (CBC/IFC), and been described by the LA Times as “a major talent to watch”. Her debut narrative feature, WEXFORD PLAZA, screened in competition at Slamdance, was awarded the Comcast Best Narrative Feature Award by the Center for Asian American Media, and was nominated for the Toronto Film Critics Association’s Best Canadian Film Award.

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