A celebration and tribute to Loni Ding, will be held Tonight, April

A celebration and tribute to Loni Ding, will be held Tonight, April 12, 2010 at the Brecht Forum at 451 West Street, between Bank and Bethune. It will start at 6:30 PM with screenings of her work and clips from the Chinatown Memorial March that happened in San Francisco on March 14. There will be an open forum for people to tell stories, poems and anecdotes about this wonderful woman, and refreshments. Loni’s partner, David Welsh, will be present along with many colleagues and former students.

Loni Ding (full name – Isadora Quanehia Ding Welsh) was an award-winning filmmaker, teacher, people’s advocate and community organizer, who transformed independent media in the U.S. Her pioneering efforts effectively helped launch the Neighborhood Arts Program of the San Francisco Art Commission. As a tireless advocate for social issue documentary, she played a central role in the creation of the National Asian American Telecommunication Association (now the Center for Asian American Media ), ITVS , and the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers . Her television programs brought humanities studies to literally millions of school children and PBS audiences with her innovative use of filmed narrative history lessons. Her ground-breaking Asian American history films include the Color of Honor and Nisei Soldier, and a series, Ancestors in the Americas, on the experiences of Asians in the New World.

Loni inspired thousands of students in her 35 years of teaching and she brought a passionate social conscience to independent filmmaking. Loni saw no distinction between filmmaking and community organizing and she knew the power of public media “to inform, connect and convene”. From the start, and she worked for public media, open diverse voices and for the media policies necessary to sustain it. She was a leader who spoke truth to power and believed that media was a tool by which communities may realize the power that resides in them. We will miss her. Loni’s website is http://www.cetel.org.

A fund has been established for an annual Loni Ding Award in Social Issue Documentary — (a juried cash award) managed by the Center for Asian American Media. (Loni was a founder of NAATA, which has been renamed CAAM). For further information contact Stephen Gong (sgong@asianamericanmedia.org) or Barbara Abrash (ba2@nyu.edu) The East Coast Loni Ding Celebration is sponsored by: The Center for Media, Culture and History, NYU; Deep Dish TV; Third World Newsreel; Asian Cinevision; the Center for Asian American Media; Paper Tiger TV, National Black Programming Consortium: Scribe Video Center, The Black Producers Consortium; Women Make Movies; Downtown Community Television, the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU and many individuals.

TONIGHT! Monday, April 12, 2010
Brecht Forum
451 West Street
Between Bank and Bethune
6:30PM
New York, NY

For further information contact deedeehalleck@gmail.com.
Donations for the event, contact twn@twn.org.