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vũ t. thu hà — Director, Producer, Writer, Editor

vũ t. thu hà is an interdisciplinary artist working primarily in film, photography and conceptual art. Her installations have been exhibited throughout the West Coast. Her first films, each night (2001) and Shut Up White Boy (2002), have screened nationally and internationally.

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Debbie Ng — Writer, Producer

is a budding writer and filmmaker whose first short video, Troo Bloo (2003), has screened nationally and internationally. She lives in San Francisco's sunny Mission District.

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Kathy Uyên Wardrobe

Kathy Uyên (Nguyễn) was born and raised in San Jose, CA. Since her first 5th grade play, she has had leading roles in films such as Oan Hồn (Spirits), directed by Victor Vũ, Ngũ Vị Hương (Five Spices), directed by Kiên Nguyễn, and Asian Stories (Book III), directed by Ronald Oda. She has been in numerous commercials, most recently Direct TV, K-Swiss, and the NBC/Chevrolet Winter Olympics promo. Aside from acting, she also loves to MC/Host, (Co-Host for VAX TV show), and is currently partnering up to start a production studio, Scopotone Entertainment Inc.

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Carla M. Roley — Cinematographer

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, Carla went on to study Photography and Film at Art Center College of Design in her native California. Carla’s photographic work began with documentary and editorial portraiture, influenced by extensive travel throughout seven continents. Enraptured by the stories of those she encountered, Carla’s work naturally evolved to documentary and narrative cinematography. “Kieu” will be Carla’s first feature narrative film. She has shot numerous short films including “Sanctuary,” “Procession,” “Heaven,” and “Love in Three Minutes”. Unable to attain a visa to Iran to shoot “The Color of Love,” Carla served as US-based producer for the documentary. After several years in San Francisco, where she taught at the Academy of Art College, Carla is now based out of New York City. Visit Carla at www.carlaroley.com

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Leilani Lumen — Associate Producer, Assistant Director, Production Manager, Editor

Leilani Lumen is a writer and film/video maker living in San Francisco. Her works have shown locally at the SomArts Gallery and Artists' Television Access, and in film festivals throughout the country and abroad. Visit Leilani at www.pinklittle.com

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Victoria R. Fong — Assistant Camera

Victoria Fong is a San Francisco native. She has extensive experience in film, video, television and theatre production. She is currently a student in UC Santa Cruz’s Community Studies program with an emphasis on Social Documentation.

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Nguyễn Thái Trang-Anh — Translation

Trang-Anh is honored to be participating in a small part for this historical film project. She appreciates that the film has brought out the voices of many Kieus in the San Francisco Bay Area, in Viet Nam, and throughout the world. She currently works as a social worker at a county hospital. When she's not at work, she also offers her voice for Dong Song That, the Vietnamese LGBT radio program in Northern California, and her assistance with the editorial team of O Moi Zine, the Vietnamese LBT zine headquartered in Southern California.

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Andrea Chignoli — Additional Editor

Fulbright Scholar 2002-2004 and MFA Film at Columbia University, Andrea has edited several theatrically-released feature-length films in her home country--Chile--and in Europe, including "The Loco Fever", a fiction film co-produced by Pedro Almodovar and shown at the Venice Film Festival 2002. Her recent editing credits include the documentaries "Vern" USA, acquired by MOMA in 2004 and "The Color of Love" (USA/Iran), official selection Montreal Film Festival 2004.

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Q String Quartet — Original Music

Ahram Kim (cello)
Christine Teano Lipat (viola)
Joemy Ito-Gates (violin)
Dorothy Wang (violin, guitar, bass)

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Dorothy Wang — Sound Recording, Q String Quartet Violinist

Dorothy Wang grew up in northeast Tennessee, playing classical violin and piano, with a subconscious and deeply repressed appreciation for bluegrass. Upon moving to San Francisco, she has played guitar and violin in many punk / alternative rock bands and side projects since 1991, including the Dragon Ladies who created soundtrack music for Vu T. Thu Ha's film, “Shut Up White Boy.” Her most current project is the Q String Quartet, a group originally formed to write and record soundtrack music for "Kiều." Since 2001, Dorothy has been working as a sound engineer and audio/visual technician, reveling in the world of audio signal recording and fascinating cable connections.

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Kar Yin Tham — Sound Recording, Editor, Associate Producer, Gaffer

Kar Yin Tham was, until recently, the Executive Director of LYRIC (Lavender Youth Recreation and Information Center). Kar Yin has 13 years of experience in youth work, six years of immersion in the non-profit/public sector, and a rigorous commitment to social justice. At 19, Kar Yin left her home country, Malaysia, and headed to Knox College, Illinois, to earn a B.A. in Sociology & Anthropology. Once in the United States, she continued to organize her peers into action on women's health, people of color empowerment, youth concerns, as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (lgbtq) issues.

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Dan Olmsted — Sound Mixing

Dan Olmsted has taught film production at City College for the past 10 years, leading classes in beginning film production, and sound for motion pictures. His professional background revolves around post production sound for film. He was trained at a Berkeley facility, the Saul Zaentz Film Center, which produced sound mixes for many large-scale feature films including such Academy Award winning pictures as Amadeus, The English Patient, The Right Stuff, and others. As a re-recording sound mixer, Olmsted has gained a wide reputation in the local film community and can claim credits on films by John Waters, Joan Chen, David Weisman, Cade Burcell, Maryam Keshavarz and many others. And, of course: his latest project was the sound mix for "Kieu" by S.F. filmmaker Thu Ha Vu. His goal as a teacher is to inspire students with the artistic possibilities of sound in film, while preparing them to find work in the field. He has led seminars at Film Arts Foundation, BAVC, SF State University and Southern Illinois University. Besides teaching film and audio, and mixing a wide variety of narrative, documentary and experimental films, Olmsted uses his spare time to perform music in several local acts: Dandeline, Loretta Lynch, Mushroom, and Soldier of Fortune Cookie. He lives in Berkeley.

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Mai Nguyen — Wardrobe

Mai Nguyen is a conceptual designer and artist. She holds degrees in Philosophy and a dregree in Fine Arts. She has worked with The Natural Step, a non-profit think tank for design and sustainability, and was a U.S. Finalist in the 2004 Arts of Fashion Competition.

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Linda Lui — Wardrobe

Prior to receiving her degree in the history of art from UC Berkeley, Linda worked as a freelance wardobe stylist for fashion publications and led non-profit educational workshops aimed at exposing the cultural arts to students of Bay Area inner-city schools. While her background is in 20th century and contemporary art, her research and studies also include that of Gothic and Renaissance architecture, public monuments, museum methodology, and fashion history. Linda is currently working as a consultant for a San Francisco art gallery.

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Olive Loew — Makeup & Hair

Olive Loew is a hair and makeup artist extraordinaire in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be found riding her bike all around town and can be reached at pimentoproductions@yahoo.com

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leilani ly-hương nguyễn — Set Design, Writer

leilani ly-hương nguyễn was made in Viet Nam, born in Hawai'i, and grown in Cali. nguyễn is a Southeast Asian community activist & storyteller who holds an M.A. in Anthropology. She works at DataCenter, a national non-profit [decolonizing research & reclaiming community knowledge] to build grassroots power. Previously she was a co-founding member of em*power việt sisters (a young women's empowerment program), an administrator for ViếtNam Womens Forum, and an A&PI women's self-defense instructor with makearuckus.org. She is a sometime practicioner of wing chun kung fu/JKD, muay thai and ballroom dancing. Some of her scribblings have appeared in Việt Weekly, Asian Americans: the Movement and the Moment, BambooGirl zine and vnwomensforum.com. She is currently learning about midwifery and is at work on a speculative fiction short story.

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Nguyễn Đắc Hào —Production Assistant

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Nguyễn Văn Lâm —Production Assistant

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Phạm Thanh Bình —Assistant Director

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Lisa Asagi — Writer

Lisa Asagi is a writer, media artist and creative consultant. She is the author of two artist books, Physics and Twelve Scenes at 12am. A writer of creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, she has been published internationally in magazines, journals and anthologies. She has worked professionally with the media and film arts organization National Asian American Telecommunication Association (NAATA) in the areas of distribution, events production, curating, and educational material development. She has also contributed to various film and video projects in the roles of office manager for Ancestors in America directed by Loni Ding and associate producer for Kelly Loves Tony, directed by Spencer Nakasako. She has helped in the development of several independent art-based organizations, such as Downwind Productions (Honolulu) and Runt (UK), in the role of creative consultant. She actively collaborates with a wide range of visual, media/film, and performance artists. Recent exhibits of collaborative projects include: Book2, a series of remodeled found books created with Justin Chin and R. Zamora Linmark, commissioned by the Potrero Nuevo Fund administered by New Langton Arts; Traveller's Tales, an online exhibit with visual artist Gaye Chan, commissioned by the Institute of Visual Arts in London. She is a grateful recipient of a 2003 Individual Artist Grant awarded by the San Francisco Arts Commission. She was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii and currently resides in the Mission District of San Francisco. Check out www.hatchandgrow.com

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Natalie Mai-Ly Newman — Gaffer

A painter, illustrator, writer, and photographer, Natalie finally found filmmaking to be the perfect medium to combine all of her passions. After obtaining a BA at UC Berkeley in Asian Studies, Natalie moved to Vietnam where she assisted in starting up a non-government organization to rebuild Vietnamese villages. Upon returning to California, Natalie took on internships at KRON-4 News and KQED (PBS), as well as running a non-profit program teaching videomaking to at-risk youth. Her work has screened at SlamDance, South by Southwest, L.A. International Shorts, MadCat, and Film Arts film festivals. Her other work has also screened in San Francisco, Colorado, New York, Toronto, Austria, Ecuador, and Switzerland. Natalie�s current activities include post-production work on her narrative short Run Away, freelancing as an editor, and working as director of photography on short independent films. Visit her at www.natalienewman.com

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Maiana Minahal — Writer

Maiana Minahal is a queer Filipina American poet and teacher. She was born in Manila, raised in Los Angeles, and lives in San Francisco. She studied with June Jordan's poetry collective, Poetry for the People, was a winner in the 1999 San Francisco Bay Guardian Poetry Contest, and is a recipient of a Serpent Source Foundation Artist Award Grant. Her work has been published in June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint (ed. Muller, Routledge NY), Take Out: Queer Writings from Asian and Pacific America (ed. Bao, Temple Univ Press NY), inVasian: Asian Sisters Represent (ed. Kim, Study Center Press), Screaming Monkeys (ed. Galang, Coffee House Press), Going Home to a Landscape (ed. Villanueva, Calyx Press), maganda magazine, and is featured on the spoken word cd Infliptration: A Youngblood Revolution. An Artist-in-Residence at the Jon Sims Center, Maiana is creating a poetry performance called Before Their Words, a collaborative, interdisciplinary poetry performance that combines subversive, poetic narrative with indigenous pre-colonial Philippine cultural traditions. In addition to the San Francisco Bay area, Maiana has performed in New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, and Austin, and has taught poetry workshops both locally and nationally. She is a founding member of the Queer Pin@y Kreatibo collective. Maiana's first book of poetry, Sitting Inside Wonder, was published in November 2003 with Monkey Press.

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Jacqueline Thu-Hương Vũ — Writer

Jacqueline Thu-Hương Vũ, M.S.W, P.P.S.C is a consultant to the Oakland Unified School District helping to develop the district’s Foster Youth Program. She is also former Board President of Young Women United for Oakland, a youth run and led organization focused on harm reduction and youth advocacy through street based outreach to young women working in the Oakland street economy. Having recently come from McClymonds High School Student Support Staff, Ms. Vu is a school-based social worker who has a focus on youth development and youth empowerment.

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Yasmine Gomez — Production Assistant

Yasmine Gomez recently wrote and directed her first short film, “LOOK BOTH WAYS,” She has since gained experience working on music video projects for local artists, Goh Nakamura and Bantercut.