We are ready for VAFF 15!

Wednesday October 26, 2011

Thank you for your interest in volunteering for the Vancouver Asian Film Festival. All volunteer positions for the current year have been filled. Please come and see us at the Festival!

VAFF 15 executive team

Saturday April 30, 2011


Vancouver Asian Film Festival’s entire Executive Team is volunteer-based.

Arthur Louie Arthur Louie
Assistant Festival Director | Arthur Louie doesn’t have many ties to the film community outside of VAFF, but for some reason he keeps helping out with the festival every year. As Assistant Festival Director, he works behind the scenes and tries to make things run as smoothly as possible.
Baljit Sangra Baljit Sangra
Senior Programmer/Community Outreach Liaison | A graduate of the UBC Film Program, Baljit has worked as a director-producer for a number of different programs, including the arts and entertainment series VIVA! for CityTV Vancouver and Omni TV (formerly Channel M) for several seasons. Her most recent documentary, Warrior Boyz, is a co-production with the National Film Board. It was produced in association with Canwest Media for Global ‘Currents’ and the Knowledge Network and aired in 2009. Warrior Boyz examines the long running gang scene in the Lower Mainland that has claimed over 100 Indo-Canadian youth. Warrior Boyz has premiered at several festivals throughout North America.
Barbara Lee
President | Barbara is a writer and independent filmmaker in Vancouver and has worked as a broadcast journalist and reporter. In 1998, she received the regional and national Radio and Television News Directors’ Association (RTNDA) Award for Best Editorial and is the National Film Board Pacific Region’s REEL DIVERSITY 2004 winner and has recently completed and aired her documentary IN BETWEEN THE LAUGHTER. Barbara founded the Vancouver Asian Film Festival (VAFF) to promote realistic portrayals of Asians in film and television and to provide a venue for struggling Asian filmmakers to showcase their work.
Callan Tay Callan Tay
Volunteer Coordinator | Though a generally unthinking bureaucrat in his regular life, Callan’s mind buzzes with questions. Where are we going? What does this mean? How come the best films are often the least famous ones? So, Callan decided to set out to find some of these answers – by volunteering for the VAFF four years ago and then becoming part of the VAFF Executive this year. He still hasn’t found most of his answers but at least he’s thought of a lot more questions along the way.
Clement Woo Clement Woo
Newsletter Writer/Editor | Passionate about all things media and technology-related, Clement’s interests include film, music, graphic design and photography, especially exploring the connection between these different mediums. Through his work and studies, he is experienced in writing, design and editing. Clement is once again looking forward to bringing his expertise to help VAFF further develop and expand its online presence.
Felix Cheung Felix Cheng
Programmer/Print Traffic Coordinator | Hong Kong baby turned Vancouverite. Speaks Cantonese. Learned English in front of TV. Now works in TV. Past employers include NFB and Global BC. Production Coordinator extraordinaire. Tiptoed into Emily Carr’s Film/Video program after high school. Graduated with Bachelor of Media Arts. Grad film premiered at VAFF ‘06. Dabbles in writing, photography, and graphic design. Digs movies. Loves train announcements. Don’t have Bieber Fever. Once made eye contact with Jessica Alba (sparks didn’t fly). Future Nobel Prize winner. First-time VAFF programmer. Pleased to meet you.
Gillian Lo Gillian Lo
Graphic Designer | Gillian’s Myers-Briggs Type Indictor suggests that she is split right in the middle: that she has equal tendencies to both options in all pairs of preferences. Such personality allows Gillian to be a graphic designer and photographer who has a bachelor degree in engineering and 10 years of working experience in high-tech companies. (Talk about an artsy-geek!) Gillian’s passions include food, people and making things better. This is Gillian’s first year with the VAFF committee and she is stoked!
Grace Chin Grace Chin
MAMM Producer | Grace Chin is a Vancouver, British Columbia-based writer, editor and consultant. She is also a member of the Playwrights Theatre Centre (PTC) and the Editors’ Association of Canada. Produced works include Twisting Fortunes, The Quickie, and most recently, The C-Word, all at the PTC. Grace has worked as a writer, performer and producer with Theatre in the Raw, Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, CBC Radio British Columbia, Channel M (now Omni), Shaw Multicultural Channel, the Cineworks Independent Filmmakers’ Society, and the Vancouver Asian Film Festival. Her short fiction appears in Strike the Wok: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Canadian Fiction, and online in the CBC Radio Three British Columbia archives, Volume 1, Issue 25, Item 23—Playing With New Words: Discovering Asian Literature. She has also authored book reviews for Ricepaper magazine, and co-produces a pan-Asian script reading series, Scripting Aloud.
Javier Badillo Javier Badillo
MAMM Videographer | Javier Badillo is a Venezuelan director, producer and writer. After traveling the world, playing in Asian punk bands and working in 2D cartoon animation, he found his calling in film. He is currently producing a 3D film for one of Canada’s first stereoscopic 3D production houses and is developing his first feature film. —http://www.javierbadillo.com
Kathy Leung Kathy Leung
Senior Programmer/Curator | As a writer, sometimes ‘slash’ director, Kathy’s films have screened at numerous festivals, receiving two Golden Sheaf nominations and a Leo award nomination. Her scripts were selected for Whistler International Film Festival’s Short Scripts Competition and twice for CityTV’s Cinecity Initiatives as well as produced for broadcast on CityTV. Last winter, “Red Letters”, an original musical she co-wrote was produced by Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre and toured three cities in BC.
Lesley Chang Lesley Chang
Media Coordinator | Lesley began her journey into public relations by volunteering for the CPRS National Conference in 2009 as a live blogger. There, she discovered the true power of social media and what it means to businesses. Ever since beginning the public relations program at Kwantlen, Lesley has taken every chance to volunteer her talents as a communicator, doing everything from media relations to creating editorial blogging calendars and creating social media policies for companies of all sizes.
Lillian Lam
Art Director | Returning as Art Director for VAFF 2011, Lillian Lam brings with her over 7 years of experience in print, interface and web design. As the co-founder of Together Production Design, she can meld art with technology like no other. A 10 minute website? No problem. See lillianlam.ca or lillian.com. Check out the rest of her work at tcpdesign.com.
Mona Mok Mona Mok
Programmer/Web Content Administrator | Mona Mok is a director with a background in sound design as a graduate from Vancouver Film School’s Sound Design program. Mona’s most recent project is a feature length comedy entitled Everything Louder Than Everything Else which premiered at the Whistler Film Festival in 2010. She was also co-director/editor/producer for a feature length documentary about Vancouver indie rock band Ladyhawk’s recording session in an abandoned farmhouse in Kelowna entitled, Let Me Be Fictional.
Nancy Ho
Lead Social Media Writer | Nancy is an eclectic and curious traveler of social conscience. She is @nansiepants, has a blog, is a lover of anything gourmet and an avid explorer of the best things Vancouver has to offer. Her role as Lead Social Media Writer allows her to explore the intersect between emergent trends and evolving culture. Fueled by lavender lattes and/or anything venti and never without her Blackberry in her hand, she is ready to take on the world of social media with updates of pingpong smashes, wushu mastering, and tear jerking moments from this year’s VAFF.
Paul Carr Paul Carr
Director of Social Media | Paul Antony Carr is a visual artist interested in relationships between image and text – the types of relationships that just so happen to pop up both in film and on the internet fairly frequently.
Pennylane Shen
Director of Community Development | Pennylane Shen is the co-founder and Art Director of Dazed and Confucius. A business dedicated to the development and consulting of non-profits and emerging artists. She holds a Master’s Degree in Visual Culture Theory from NYU. In the field of Cultural and Social Criticism, she has lectured at various forums in New York; London; Toronto; Chicago and Seoul. In Vancouver, Pennylane manages the figurative artists’ collective Phantoms in the Front Yard, teaches at Langara College and is an associate of the Elliott Louis Gallery.
Peter Leung Peter Leung
Festival Director | As past festival director and executive director and handling programming and advisory duties this year, Peter continues to channel his inner-Asian. Conceived in Kowloon and raised on Fantasy Island and Captain Crunch, Peter is fortunate to be allergic to math and chicken’s feet and aspires to doctor… his transcripts. He continues to channel his inner-filmmaker every summer as co-founder of the Mighty Asian Moviemaking Marathon (MAMM) along with Barbara Lee.
Winnie Tam Winnie Tam
Director of Marketing & Sales | French fries, shiitake mushrooms, black-ink pens, the colour pink, and films. These are a few of Winnie’s favourite things. Winnie feels blessed to live in Vancouver – a city that, like the festival, celebrates diversity and allows both sides of her identities to grow and thrive. She appreciates good translations in subtitles and loves all Johnny Depp movies. (Well, maybe not The Tourist.) Winnie has years of experience in marketing and event planning, and is happy to be on the VAFF team this year.

Volunteer with VAFF

Wednesday April 27, 2011


The Vancouver Asian Film Festival Society (VAFF) is a not-for-profit society that depends on the generosity of its volunteers.

VAFF strives to provide an entertaining, professional and fun atmosphere for all our volunteers and we value every volunteer’s contribution of time and energy.

Many of our volunteers return year after year and they bring their friends out to join the camaraderie and to enjoy the many films and parties.

Throughout the year, VAFF is always looking for committed volunteers with particular skill sets to assist us with the following:

Then in October we require up to 60 general volunteers to help with our annual film festival. Festival positions include, but are not limited to ticket taking, ticketing & membership sign up, setting up banners/signage, ushering, driving and postering.

BENEFITS to Volunteers
1. Free access to some events
2. VAFF Movie vouchers
3. Anna’s Cakehouse Gift Certificates
4. Program Tickets for friends and family – pre-festival volunteers
5. DVDs and other item giveaways at Volunteer party
6. Meet filmmakers and actors
7. Meet new people
8. Gain leadership/organizational skills
9. Increase cultural diversity in Vancouver
10. Recommendation Letter
11. Lots of FUN!

If you are interested in volunteering, please email volunteer@vaff.org