WORLD Channel Honors Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with Eight New Documentary Films

BOSTON, April 20, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- This May, WORLD Channel, in partnership with the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Pacific Islanders in Communication (PIC) and KQED San Francisco, celebrates the voices of Asian Pacific Americans with a selection of eight original and compelling documentary films that spotlight the identity and diverse stories of this community. The curated collection includes premieres from award-winning series America ReFramed, Local, USA, and Doc World. A complete guide about Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month programming is available on the WORLD Channel website.

For this APA Heritage Month, WORLD Channel explores the identity evolution of immigrants, refugees, and first and second generation Asian Pacific American children who don't have just one identity, but two.

In conjunction with the broadcast films, WORLD Channel is releasing a series of digital shorts featuring the filmmakers that have aired on WORLD-exclusive series. On the night of each broadcast, filmmakers introduce their film and give audiences a look at special behind-the-scenes video. Woven throughout is the story of the importance of APA Heritage Month. Digital shorts will be released on Facebook and Twitter and used as on-air interstitials throughout the month.

WORLD Channel Digital will also release a series of interviews—on social media and as on-air interstitials—from a number of Asian American directors, telling their story of Asian-American identity and pride.

This revealing look into the Asian Pacific American community—from China to Hawai'i—includes the following eight films (full episode descriptions available):

May 8
Local, USA: Forever, Chinatown, presented in partnership with KQED's Truly CA, is a story of self-taught, 81-year-old artist Frank Wong who has spent the past four decades recreating his fading memories by building detailed miniature models of the San Francisco Chinatown of his youth. This film takes the journey of one individual and maps it to a rapidly changing urban neighborhood from 1940s to present day. In his compromise with immortality, Frank announces plans to cremate his exquisite works with him upon his death in order to 'live inside them forever' in his afterlife. Forever, Chinatown will also air on KQED WORLD channel on May 8 at 9:30PM PT. KQED's main channel will encore the special on June 16 at 8:00PM PT. 

May 9
For 29-year-old filmmaker Matthew Hashiguchi, growing up half-Japanese American in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, was a difficult experience. His inability to blend in with the predominantly White population of his surroundings translated into his own personal struggles with race, and in America ReFramed: Good Luck Soup audiences join Matthew on a journey to discover how Japanese heritage influenced the lives of his Japanese American family members; before, during and after World War II.

May 14
Doc World: Finding Samuel Lowe follows retired NBC executive Paula Williams Madison and her brothers, Elrick and Howard Williams, who were raised in Harlem by their Chinese Jamaican mother. In order to fulfill a promise to their mother to connect to her estranged father's people, they embark on a journey to China to uncover their ancestral roots and search for clues about their long-lost grandfather, Samuel Lowe.

May 15
Local USA: The Roots of 'Ulu, presented by Pacific Islanders in Communication, transports audiences from the Polynesian voyaging canoes that brought 'ulu from Tahiti to Hawai'i, up through the present day efforts of native practitioners, medical specialists and agricultural experts who have a shared vision of the 'ulu (breadfruit) tree playing an important role in cultural preservation, health restoration and food sustainability for Hawai'i's future.  

May 16
When he was six-years-old, Dinesh Sabu's parents died. Raised by his siblings, he had little idea who his parents were or where he came from. Now as an adult with a burning curiosity, Dinesh sets out on a journey across the United States and India to piece together their story. Uncovering a silenced family history of mental illness, Dinesh confronts the legacy of having a schizophrenic mother who died by suicide, the reality of growing up an orphaned immigrant, and the trauma of these events in America ReFramed: Unbroken Glass. 

May 21
The 2008 Sichuan earthquake, China's deadliest disaster in three decades, killed 90,000 people, including more than 5,000 children. Losing a child is an immeasurable tragedy for parents anywhere, but in China the effect is compounded by the one-child policy. In response to the earthquake, China's government made an exception for those who lost their only child to conceive another. Doc World: One Child follows the journey of these three families as they try to restore a sense of normalcy and struggle to move past the loss of their children.

May 23
Arrested at 16 and tried as an adult for kidnapping and robbery, Eddy Zheng served over 20 years in California prisons and jails. America ReFramed: Breathin' – The Eddy Zheng Story paints an intimate portrait of Eddy-the prisoner, the immigrant, the son, the activist-on his journey to freedom, rehabilitation and redemption.

May 28
As leader of the world's only LGBT political party, Bemz Benedito dreams of being the first transgender woman in the Philippine Congress. But in a predominantly Catholic nation, rallying for LGBT representation in the halls of Congress is not an easy feat. Taking their equality campaign to small-town hair salons and regional beauty pageants, the activists mobilize working-class trans hairdressers and beauty queens to join the fight against their main political opponent, a homophobic evangelical preacher. Culminating on election day, Doc World: Out Run provides a unique look into the challenges LGBT people face as they transition into the mainstream and fight for dignity, legitimacy, and acceptance across the globe.

Special encore programming that includes award winning documentary films is also airing this month as a part of APA Heritage Month.

May 2
Born in a refugee camp in Cambodia, poet Kosal Khiev was lucky to escape the wartorn country before he was two years old; he was granted asylum and grew up in the U.S. By the age of 16, he was convicted of attempted murder and spent the next 14 years in jail where he found the power of writing and spoken-word. After being released from prison, as a refugee with no permanent resident status in the U.S., Khiev was deported to Cambodia, a country he's never known. America ReFramed: Cambodian Son, an Asian American Journalist Award winner, follows a year in the life of Khiev, while he navigates his new fame as Phnom Penh's premiere poet and receives the most important invitation of his career-to represent the Kingdom of Cambodia at the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.

May 7
Doc World: The Killing Fields of Dr. Haing S. Ngor tells the story of Haing Ngor, one of the most recognized survivors of the Cambodian genocide and a man who became a worldwide ambassador for justice in his homeland, only to be murdered in a Los Angeles Chinatown alley. Dr. Ngor revisited the story of the Cambodian death camps in his Oscar-winning performance in the theatrical film The Killing Fields. Anchored by Ngor's powerful autobiography and presented in an original mix of animation and live action, the film presents a transcontinental journey of loss and reconciliation.

Audiences are invited to learn more about this community through the #MyAPALife social conversation on WORLD Channel's Facebook and Twitter, in partnership with American Documentary, PBS, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), and Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC). WORLD and American Documentary will be hosting a live digital conversation between Asian Pacific American filmmakers from America ReFramed, Doc World and Local, USA in May. 

Media Contact:
Alexis Feinberg
WGBH
617-300-5334
[email protected]

About WORLD Channel

The WORLD Channel delivers the best of public television's nonfiction, news and documentary programming. The channel features original content by and about diverse communities to U.S. audiences through local public television stations and streaming online at worldchannel.org. WORLD reached 33.3 million unique viewers 18+ last year (52% adults 18-49) and over-indexes in key diversity demographics. Online, the WORLD Channel expands on broadcast topics and fuels dialogue across social media, providing opportunities for broad and diverse audience interaction. For its exploration of the human spirit, WORLD Channel won the 2016 Christopher Award in the TV/cable category for the episode IF YOU BUILD IT, a part of its America Reframed series.

WORLD is programmed by WGBH/Boston, in partnership with American Public Television and WNET/New York, and in association with PBS and National Educational Telecommunications Association. Funding for the WORLD Channel is provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.  For more information about The WORLD Channel, visit www.worldchannel.org

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