Join us for an evening screening of short films by AAPI Texan filmmakers curated by Tony Nguyen, the founder of SPACY Microcinema, follower by a panel discussion moderated by local filmmaker Jhad Villena, featuring David Chong, Board Member of the Asian Film Festival of Dallas at the Crow Museum of Asian Art.

Tony Nguyen (Founder of SPACY Microcinema)

Spacy is a microcinema fostering connections among audiences across a variety of perspectives and all through the medium of moving images.

David Chong (Board Member of the Asian Film Festival of Dallas)

David Chong is a board member with the Asian Film Festival of Dallas. Previously he worked in journalism and documentary television. While living in San Francisco, he served as an arts organizer with Kearny Street Workshop, where he helped put together a multidisciplinary art festival featuring local Asian American artists.

Jhad Villena (Facilitator) 

JHAD VILLENA is a Filipino-American filmmaker with TAMARIND - a multi-cultural collective of directors, cinematographers, and editors from North and Central Texas who have been creating together since the mid-2010s. He directed and is in post-production for AS WE LEAVE, IT FOLLOWS, an Austin Film Society-supported short road drama depicting Filipino and Mexican families in Houston, TX, preparing for an approaching hurricane.

Born in New York City to Filipino immigrants before being raised across California and Texas, Jhad currently works as a freelance photographer, camera assistant, and DIT in Dallas-Fort Worth. Helping in past years as a jurist for South Dallas’ Oak Cliff Film Festival and as venue and video crew for SXSW, Jhad has also worked as a statewide organizer or volunteer for Malaya Movement USA, International Migrants Alliance, Witness At The Border, and other human rights causes throughout Texas.