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 four 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
- — Director, Musician
- Khosro Berahmandi
- — General Manager, Visual Artist
- Hunt Hoe
- — Financial Advisor, Film maker
- Bernard Truong
- — Sponsor Consultant
- Milton Tanaka
- — Diversity Consultant
- Kiran Ambwani
- — Documentation
- Priya Veerasubramanian
- — Network, Visual Artist
- Angelica Leminh
- — Networker
JANET LUMB *
Director
|
KHOSRO BERAHMANDI
General Manager |
BERNARD TRUONG
Sponsor Consultant
|
MILTON TANAKA
Diversity consultant |
KIRAN AMBWANI
Documentation
|
PRIYA VEERASUBRAMANIAN
Network |
ANGELICA LEMINH
Networker |
|
Foreign Ghosts Society Inc.
Board of Directors :
- Hunt Hoe
- — President
- Janet Lumb
- — Vice-President
- Khosro Berahmandi
- — Secretary
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)
- Aubert Prévost
- —Starbucks Regional Director of Operations
- Scott Falconer
- —Executive Director of Doculink Inc. printing company
- Alanis Obomsawin
- —Film maker, Activist and Spokesperson for the First Nations People
- May Chiu
- —Director of the Montreal Chinese Family Services of the Greater Montreal area
- Stanley Asher
- —English journalist with Radio Centre-Ville, Place Publique
- Sophie Laurent
- —French journalist with Radio-Canada
- Roshi Chadha
- —The Chadha Family Foundation
May 2008 Programming Team
- Janet Lumb
- —Music, Film
- Shuni Tsou
- —Associate Artistic Director
- Khosro Berahmandi
- —Visual arts
Collaborator
- Caroline Tabah
- —Closing evening Bollywood Party and other perfumes from India Take 4 (The Garden of Love)
Asia in fusion 2008 Team
- Liz Chan
- —Event Coordinator
- Ainsley Jenicek
- —Promotion
- Angelica LeMinh
- —Network and promotion
- Pierre Merineau
- —Technical Director
- Khosro Berahmandi
- —Festival General manager
