Happy Hour: 5:30 pm
Film: 6:30 pm
Poetry: 7:30 pm
Tickets: $10 -- Eventbrite link forthcoming
In collaboration with Kundiman Midwest, the Foundation of Asian American Independent Media is celebrating the start of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month with an evening of cinema and poetry! Join us for "Modern Portraits: An Evening of Short Films and Poetry," the official kickoff event for the 29th Annual Asian Americ**an Showcase.
Come early to connect with Chicago film lovers, writers, and creatives during our community mixer, then stay to experience a celebration of voices through film and poetry. After a screening of literary-inspired documentaries and experimental animation, enjoy a live reading by poets Lisa Low, Meg Kim, Dawn Angelicca Barcelona, and Darshita Jain.
Short Films:
Yu & Me
Directed by Esther Chan, Claudine Cho
When a fire destroys a beloved Chinatown bookstore, its hyper-independent owner learns that community is necessary for survival.
The Bird, the Girl and the Typhoon
Directed and Animated by Angeline Marie Michael Meitzler
An elder, migrant Filipino nurse, following the same routine for 40 years, wakes up in her now-grown daughter's old bedroom. She remembers a farmer from her childhood who once told her that the end of the typhoon season and the arrival of the harvest will begin with the sight of a red-colored bird.
Cindy Tran: From Here to Here
Directed by Xinyan Yu
From family estrangement to New York City’s overlooked restaurants, Cindy Tran’s poems capture what’s hidden, honest, and beautiful about being human. She invites us into the in-between, where we embrace difficult experiences and reimagine the possibilities of poetry.
Poets:
Lisa Low is the author of Replica (2026) from the University of Wisconsin Press and Crown for the Girl Inside (2023), winner of the Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest from YesYes Books. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Ecotone, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and elsewhere, and her essay “How to Apologize” won the 2020 Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize. She is the recipient of a 2023 Pushcart Prize and has an MFA from Indiana University and a PhD from the University of Cincinnati, where she served as associate editor at The Cincinnati Review.
Meg Kim is the author of the chapbook Invisible Cartographies (New Delta Review 2024). Her poems have appeared in Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, TriQuarterly, and Nimrod International Journal, among others. They are the recipient of a writing grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation, and have received support from the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and Sundress Academy for the Arts. Meg holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and currently teaches a class called Writing Chicago as an adjunct for Wheaton College.
Dawn Angelicca Barcelona is the author of Roundtrip (2025), her debut chapbook by Finishing Line Press. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in Tyger Quarterly, Brink, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Winner of the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award in Poetry in 2022, Dawn is an alumna of Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, VONA, The Fulbright Program and more.
Darshita Jain is an arts administrator, cultural worker, and poet in the city of Chicago. In the last decade she has finished her masters in Arts Journalism, worked as Program Director at Woman Made Gallery and currently works as the Director of Outreach & Artist Programs at Lillstreet Art Center. She is on the Board for the Chicago Poetry Center and serves as the essays editor at Honey Literary. Her writing can be found in Sixty Inches from Center, Chicago Reader, Hooligan Magazine and more.