July Town Hall: Film + Media

Join Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) for the July Town Hall at ICP, welcoming filmmakers, creators, producers, and distributors to share their projects and resources with the AAPI creative community. This month’s featured presenters include Munir Atalla, head of production & acquisitions at Watermelon Pictures and former creative writing strategist at Netflix; John Woo, executive director of Asian CineVision and the Asian American International Film Festival; and filmmaker Morrison Gong to share their insights of navigating the film and photography industry in New York.

Additionally, the evening will feature a line-up of brief pitches from the community. After the presentations, we’ll host a potluck meal in the ICP Cafe, so please bring something to share; homemade or store bought items are welcome. A4 will provide drinks.

Thank you to ICP for hosting us! Please note that ICP’s museum is closed on Tuesdays.

This event is FREE and open to the public. We suggest a $5 donation to go towards keeping A4’s programs free. RSVP is required to attend and/or pitch, but you do not have to pitch to attend.

For pitching guidelines and other information about A4 Town Halls, please visit our FAQ. If you have additional questions, please email programs@aaartsalliance.org.

Accessibility:
Assistive Listening Systems are available upon request. Email programs@icp.org to inquire for use during a public program.

If you need CART Transcription, ASL interpretation, large print, or any other accommodations for this event, please email programs@aaartsalliance.org at least two weeks before this event.

To keep everyone safe and healthy, if you are not feeling well, please stay at home. We will provide masks and hand sanitizer at check-in.

Recording:
This event will be recorded and it will be uploaded to A4’s YouTube channel and sent to all registrants.

About Munir Atalla
Munir Atalla is the Head of Production & Acquisitions at Watermelon Pictures. He previously oversaw creative writing strategy for growing and emerging markets at Netflix. Informed by his background as an investigative reporter, Munir has produced projects for A24, Peacock, and NBC News. His work for PBS Frontline was nominated for a DuPont Award for Journalistic Excellence in 2020. He teaches filmmaking courses at Columbia University and Hofstra University, and his work has played at numerous festivals including The Aspen Shorts Fest, The New Yorker Screening Room, and BlackStar Film Festival. www.muniratalla.com

About Morrison Gong
Morrison Gong works across photography, writing, performance and moving images. They invoke the body as a site of haunting, wounding, conjuring and mythmaking. Communing with insects, aquatic vertebrates, relics, ceremonial objects—messengers of the sacred and the underworld—they engage their practice as psychic archaeology, unearthing eros and loss within the physical and the metaphysical. Their video works have been shown at Anthology Film Archives, Microscope Gallery, Vox Populi Gallery, CROSSROADS presented by San Francisco Cinematheque, Hong Kong Arthouse Film Festival, among others. Their photography has been featured on It’s Nice That, Whitehot Magazine and Lomography Magazine. Gong received their BFA from Parsons School of Design and their MA at the New School for Social Research. They are based in Brooklyn, NY.

About John Woo
John Woo is co-founder and Executive Director of Woo Art International, a New York based creative services and visual communications studio founded in 1980. Woo Art creates award winning visual media for a diverse base of clients in the communications, broadcast promotion, exhibit, and entertainment industries. He is the Board Chair for Asian CineVision (ACV), the New York based not-for-profit media arts organization and presenter of the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF). In 2007, he became Acting Director of ACV and in 2010, Executive Director. www.asiancinevision.org

About A4’s Town Hall
Town Hall is A4’s bi-monthly community gathering event that features presentations, pitches, and power networking over a potluck meal. We welcome artists of all disciplines, as well as arts organizations, to share upcoming projects, find collaborators, or discover new opportunities in a lively space.

About ICP
The International Center of Photography is the world’s leading institution dedicated to photography and visual culture. Cornell Capa founded ICP in 1974 to champion “concerned photography”—socially and politically minded images that can educate and change the world. Through our exhibitions, education programs, community outreach, and public programs, ICP offers an open forum for dialogue about the power of the image.