Tag: Francis Wong

Film

“The Only Language She Knows” @ LES Festival of the Arts

Post author By hoisanpoet
Post date May 25, 2024

FILM FESTIVAL PROGRAM: Saturday, May 25, 2024, 1 – 11pm. Hosted by Theater for the New City, 155 First Av, New York, NY 10003

LES Lower East Side Festival of the Arts is an annual celebration of the rich artistic culture and ethnic diversity of this area. For three days over Memorial Day Weekend, TNC produces a cabaret-style festival featuring over 100 performing groups from the Lower East Side. This year, the festival is mounted with the theme “Democracy: Use it or Lose it.”

The 2024 Film Program is a 12-hour long film festival of art-house, experimental and independent films, showcasing a diverse selection of films from comedy, documentaries, drama and sci-fi. Join any time between 1pm and 11pm for an unforgettable event filled with captivating storytelling and visual masterpieces.

1.51pm THE ONLY LANGUAGE SHE KNOWS (1992) – short film directed by Carla Blank, produced by Ishmael Reed – 21 min. Starring: Genny Lim, M.J. Lee and Al Young. Filmed by Allen Willis, with music composed by Francis Wong.

A traditional Chinese American mother and her avant-garde daughter have a kitchen fight.

Web Gallery

The first LES Festival of the Arts, presented June 14 to 16, 1996, was a three-day, indoor and outdoor multi-arts festival, organized by TNC and a coalition of civic, cultural and business leaders. The aim was to demonstrate the creative explosion of the Lower East Side and the area’s importance to culture and tourism for New York City. It employed two theater spaces at TNC plus the block of East Tenth Street between First and Second Avenues, featured over 100 attractions, drew favorable press and attracted crowds from all around the City. Its success prompted TNC to continue the festival annually on Memorial Day Weekend. For 28 years it has been presented free each year to an average attendance of 4,000. (In 2020 it was held online due to pandemic concerns).

Ishmael Reed is the winner of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (genius award), the renowned L.A. Times Robert Kirsch Lifetime Achievement Award and the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award. He has been nominated for a Pulitzer and finalist for two National Book Awards and is Professor Emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley; and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation, which promotes multicultural American writing. He also founded PEN Oakland which issues the Josephine Miles Literary Awards. PEN Oakland has been called “The Blue Collar PEN” by The New York Times. Ishmael Reed is the author of over twenty titles including the acclaimed novel “Mumbo Jumbo,” as well as essays, plays and poetry. Titles include: “The Freelance Pallbearers;” “The Terrible Threes;” “The Last Days Of Louisiana Red;” “Yellow Back Radio Broke Down;” “Reckless Eyeballing;” “Flight To Canada;” “Japanese By Spring,” and “Juice!.”

Tags Al Young, Allen Willis, Carla Blank, Francis Wong, Genny Lim, Ishmael Reed, LES Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, M.J. Lee, The Only Language She Knows

Music Performance Poetry

Ode B’kongofon
Hafez Modirzadeh Ensemble

Post author By hoisanpoet
Post date May 2, 2022
No Comments on Ode B’kongofon
Hafez Modirzadeh Ensemble

Thursday, May 12 – 7:30pm

Bird & Beckett Books & Records

653 Chenery Street, San Francisco, CA 94131

With B’kongofonic blood at the saxophonic root, well below surface engraving, resonating within its alloy, sounds are gathering to invoke a heroic people: kongo as “gathering”, a Central African people’s homeland; fon as “sound”, a West African people’s language; B’ referring to all “peoples” along the resistance continuum. Hear ye, the animating force of a strange horn sanctified!

Genny Lim – poetry, invocation
Hafez Modirzadeh – kongofon, assorted winds
Francis Wong – kongofon, assorted winds
John-Carlos Perea – electric bass, cedar flute, vocals
Keshav Batish – drums, tabla

Genny Lim and the ensemble perform Modirzadeh’s epic poem, Ode B’kongofon.

$25 cash cover charge; byob and a mask (optional if vaccinated)

birdbeckett.com

Tags Bird & Beckett, Francis Wong, Hafez Modirzadeh, John-Carlos Perea, Keshav Batish, Ode B’kongofon

Performance

Purple Gums: The Zen of Glenn: Glenn Horiuchi Birthday Retrospective

Post author By hoisanpoet
Post date February 27, 2022

Bobby Bradford, Francis Wong & William Roper with poet Genny Lim celebrate “The Zen of Glenn.”

Three master musicians and an esteemed poet join together in honor of their late colleague and friend Glenn Horiuchi, born February 27, 1955. Horiuchi, who passed on June 3, 2000, was a key figure in the Asian American arts movements & companies that flowered in the San Francisco Bay Area and up and down the West Coast in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.

Find the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s YouTube channel or Facebook page, and donate if you possibly can to support the musicians, the music and the venue!

Saxophonist Francis Wong, co-founder and creative director of Asian Improv aRts (AIR), notes that Horiuchi

“was a prime mover for Asian Improv aRts from our pre-history in the Asian American Movement until his transition. A role model and mentor for me and so many others, he played such roles as a musician, teacher, community organizer — most notably the redress movement but also in the El Salvador support movement, and of course Jesse Jackson for President — and Zen Buddhist practitioner, all the while being a devoted family man. He continues to inspire us with his life example, artistic work, and abiding spirit.”

Tags Asian Improv aRts, Bird & Beckett, Bobby Bradford, Francis Wong, Glenn Horiuchi, Purple Gums, William Roper

Performance

Berkeley Poetry Festival 2022

Post author By hoisanpoet
Post date January 22, 2022

Genny Lim receives the Berkeley Poetry Festival’s 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award.

Poster design by Kara Yoon Frame https://karaframe.com/

Poetry & Dance with dNaga Dance Company

Join the Live-streamed Festival via Zoom or on the Bay Area Poetry Festival Facebook page on Saturday, January 22, from 3:00pm-4:00pm, for poetry and dance with dNaga Dance Company, featuring recorded poetry readings by Genny.

Saturday, January 22, 3:00–4:00pm • https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82962508028 • On Facebook Live

With special thanks to Claudine Naganuma, Artistic Director of dNaga Dance Company — a unique ensemble made up of multi-generational dancers including young artists, professionals, and elders. Through workshops, classes, choreography and productions, the dance company explores the nature of our human condition and its relationship to our greater community.

The Remembered, dNaga Dance Co. Lifetime Achievement Awardee Genny Lim recites her poem “The Remembered” January, 2022. Berkeley Poetry Festival.

Dance for PD® Oakland Performs “Prayer for Jasper” Poem. Lifetime Achievement Awardee Genny Lim recites her poem “Prayer for Jasper” January, 2022. Berkeley Poetry Festival. For more, visit dnaga.org

This is My Country, dNaga Dance Co. Lifetime Achievement Awardee Genny Lim recites her poem “This is My Country” January, 2022. Berkeley Poetry Festival.

Myths, dNaga Dance Co. Lifetime Achievement Awardee Genny Lim recites her poem “Myths” January, 2022. Berkeley Poetry Festival.

Lifetime Achievement Award and Reading

On Sunday, January 23, from 3:00pm-4:00pm, enjoy readings by poets Maw Shein Win and Minal Hajratwala, and the presentation of the Lifetime Achievement Award to Genny by City of Berkeley Councilperson Terry Taplin.

Sunday, January 23, 3:00–4:00pm • https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82344447103 • On Facebook Live

Messages from Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Elena Serrano and Nancy Hom

The Berkeley Poetry Festival is funded by the City of Berkeley Civic Arts Commission and Poets & Writers

In Honor of Genny Lim: City of Berkeley Proclamation, January 23, 2022

Tags Berkeley Poetry Festival, Claudine Naganuma, Dance for PD, dNaga Dance Company, Elena Serrano, Francis Wong, Jon Jang, Maw Shein Win, Minal Hajratwala, Nancy Hom, Terry Taplin

Music Performance Poetry

SFJAZZ Poetry Festival 2018 with Genny Lim

Post author By hoisanpoet
Post date April 5, 2018
No Comments on SFJAZZ Poetry Festival 2018 with Genny Lim

Thursday, April 5th – Sunday, April 8, 2018, Joe Henderson Lab

Curated by SFJAZZ Poet Laureate Genny Lim, the 2018 Wordology Festival featured “the greatest poets of the Bay Area and beyond, centered on the concept of ‘wordology.’”

Web Gallery

Genny Lim and Francis Wong at SFJazz Poetry Festival 2018

“I want poets to… let go of their concept of how the poem is supposed to be, to surrender to the spirit of improvisation, so the poem can breathe and become a whole new poem.”
GENNY LIM

This year’s festival is bookended by two illustrious poets: on opening night, former California poet laureate Al Young, whom Lim calls “the Duke Ellington of letters,” and who is the much-honored author of 22 books of various genres; and, playing piano at the closing matinee, Ishmael Reed (“just a lion—a political satirist, a playwright, an essayist,” says Lim).
In between is a multicultural and multigenerational lineup of poets, rappers, spoken-word artists and jazz musicians, many among them part of San Francisco’s underground arts scene, many of them social activists as well: Arlene Biala with musician Brittany Biala; Royal Kent with Copus Multimedia (his duo with composer/pianist Wendy Loomis); also Paul Flores, Tongo Eisen-Martin, QR Hand, novelist and hip-hop artist Aya De Leon, Tony Robles, rapper Equipto, the musical ensemble the Broun Fellinis, “drum strategist” Marshall Trammel and saxophonist Francis Wong. The festival includes a tribute to Charles Mingus and Native American sax player Jim Pepper.
Poetry and Jazz Make a Harmonic Hybrid by JEAN SCHIFFMAN, sfarts.org

Performance

Where is Tibet?

Post author By hoisanpoet
Post date December 4, 2009

December 4-5, 2009 at Counterpulse

“All warfare is based on deception.” Sun Tzu, 6th c. B.C.

Politics is gentlemen’s warfare. But when words fail, bombs fall. WHERE IS TIBET?, a performance piece by Genny Lim presented by Asian Improve aRts, invites you to consider the ancient history of China and Tibet before Tibet’s occupation. It is a meditation on our human capacity to understand the nature of good and evil that exists within each of us.

Featuring Genny Lim, Tsering Dorjee Bawa, Lenora Lee, and Francis Wong. Photos by Andy Nozaka.