Who We Are

Festival Accès Asie, first formed as the Montreal Asian Heritage Festival, was founded on an Asian Heritage Month mandate established in the United States in 1976. This was further developed by the Toronto Asian Heritage Month Group in 1993. The national network of Asian Heritage Month groups and activities vary in mandate from arts presentations to forums, discussions to tributes of outstanding members from the Asian Canadian communities. The Montreal version of this mandate was revised to reflect Montreal's cultural climate.

Accès Asie was formed in 1995 to present all artistic disciplines in dance, comedy, theatre, video, film, visual arts, music, poetry, performance and new media. We feature artists with origins from over twenty countries : East Asia (Japan, China, Korea); Southeast Asia (Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore); South Asia (Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka); Central & Middle Eastern Asia (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and Armenia).

Accès Asie Structure

Accès Asie is administrated by Foreign Ghosts Society Inc. and is directed by a Steering Committee consisting of six members. Formed in 1994, Foreign Ghosts Society Inc. is a federal, charitable, chartered, non-profit organization and has been affiliated with Accès Asie since 1997.

The programming is directed by a Programming Team of five artists with specialized disciplined experiences, advised by the Steering Committee and finalized by the Board of Directors. The Steering Committee formed an Honorary Advisory Committee in 2003 to consult with and to increase our networking capacities.

Steering Committee

Janet Lumb

— Artistic director, Musician

Khosro Berahmandi

— General Manager, Visual Artist

Milton Tanaka

— Diversity Consultant

Florence So

— Resources

Kiran Ambwani

— Documentation

JANET LUMB * Artistic director	KHOSRO BERAHMANDI General Manager
MILTON TANAKA Diversity consultant	KIRAN AMBWANI Documentation
FLORENCE SO Resources

Foreign Ghosts Society Inc.
Board of Directors :

Bernard Truong

— President

Khosro Berahmandi

— Secretary

Bill McLean

— Treasurer

Cecile Cristobal

— Member

Chandra Saravanamuthu

— Member

Honorable Mentions

JANET LUMB received the 2002 Queen's Golden Jubilee Award for her contribution and dedication to the arts in Canada.

CYNTHIA LAM, former Steering Committee member and Outreach Support, also received the Queen's Jubilee Award in 2002 and was selected for her contributions to the Chinese community and awarded the Order of Canada in 2003.

Honorary Advisory Committee Members

Honorable Senator Vivienne Poy

— Who passed the motion in the Senate to declare the month of May as "Asian Heritage Month" in Canada

Helen Fotopulos

— Mayor Plateau-Mont-Royal Borough, City Counsellor, Member of the Executive Committee, Union des citoyens de l'île de Montréal (UCÎM)

Alanis Obomsawin

— Film maker, Activist and Spokesperson for the First Nations People

May Chiu

— Lawyer, Community advocate

Stanley Asher

— English journalist with Radio Centre-Ville, Place Publique

Sophie Laurent

— French journalist with Radio-Canada

Roshi Chadha

— The Chadha Family Foundation