• APA Art Exhibit
• Dragon's Roar DVD Release

Kawamura, born in Orange County in 1955, is a third-generation farmer who, with his brother Matt, tends 600 acres of small rented farm plots scattered across heavily Republican Orange County. Kawamura is the grandson of Japanese immigrants who worked in thefields before starting a feed and supply business. During World War II, they were sent to a detention camp in Gila, Ariz.; they stayed there until the mid-1950s. After college (a comparative literature graduate from the University of California, Berkeley), he harvested grapes near Bakersfield before joining the family business, now called Orange County Produce.

Ken Mok is a native of Larchmont, New York and graduated from Boston University receiving a B.S. / B.A. in business administration with a minor in journalism.

He began his professional career as a television producer in New York (WNBC) prior to moving to Atlanta, where he served as a producer for CNN's Headline News and International Hour.

Mok later moved to Los Angeles to join NBC, where he oversaw both drama and comedy series as director of current programming. He later served as director of comedy series development at ABC, where he oversaw the development of "Spin City" and "The Drew Carey Show."

Mok later became Vice President of MTV Television Productions in 1996, where he created the reality series "Making the Band," and served as executive producer of the series for its first three seasons.

He also created and executive produced UPN’s “America’s Next Top Model” with Tyra Banks, Lifetime's "Five Points" and "Tough Enough." He was the executive in charge of productions for "The Jenny McCarthy Show," ABC’s “Making the Band,” NBC’s “T.H.E.M.,” UPN's comedy "Hitz" and the television movie, "The Tiger Woods Story," for which Mok was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Special.

He was awarded an Emmy for his work on a news special dealing with congenital birth defects. One of his upcoming project is producting VH1's remake of the Partridge Family.

Mok currently resides in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Rowland Perkins, founder of CAA, describes Sheeraz Hasan as the gateway (through his program “Tinseltown TV that airs in 80 countries) to Bollywood—the nickname for India's thriving film industry – despite not speaking a word of Hindi and little Urdu. A recent report in the Hollywood Reporter described Tinseltown TV as 'Access Hollywood' for those in Bollywood.

His talk show broadcasts to 500 million people in India, Iran, and elsewhere in the Middle East with a long list of interviews with “A-List” Hollywood stars regarding their spiritual (The Spiritual Side of Hollywood Segment) and entertainment lives that fulfills his goal to promote Hollywood to Bollywood but also to glorify God and spirituality to the world as a gift back to God.

Tinseltown TV is the only Hollywood show to broadcast directly to the South Asian world (2nd largest population in the world) and other niche markets worldwide which are ignored by mainstream networks.

Hasan's first big break came in April 2002 when Michael Levy (agent and film producer) witnessed his prayers at the foot of the famous Hollywood sign and assisted him in packaging his show for the Bollywood audience.

In October 2003, Hasan was declared runner-up South Asian business leader of the year, an award sponsored by Deloitte & Touche. In August 2003, a version of the show airs on California's channel 18—a station for the state's South Asian immigrant community—and since October 2003, a different edit has appeared on BEN, an urban British channel offered through SKY Digital.

Hong Kong heartthrob singer and actress Anita Mui (born on October 10, 1963 as Mui Yim Fong) died of lung failure that was caused by cervical cancer in a Hong Kong Sanitorium Hospital at 2: 50 a.m. on Tuesday: December 30, 2003 surrounded by friends such as Jackie Chan, Willie Chan, Alan Tam, Andy Lau, John Shum, Eddie Lau and Eric Tsang. (Her other friends include Zhao Wenzhuo and Nicholas Tse) She was 40 years old.

When her father died when she was a small child, she began performing at the age of 5 giving shows at an amusement park, singing Chinese opera and pop songs in theaters. She dropped out of school during her second year of junior high school. After that, she sang at bars and nightclubs for several years.

Mui’s big break came in 1982 when she defeated 3,000 contestants to win first prize in the New Talent Singing Competition. Mui went on to carve out a reputation as “the Madonna of Asia” with her occasionally outrageous costumes, bold stage performances and a stream of hits which netted her numerous awards. Her discs and shows often became trendsetters and were hot topics for the public.

She rose to stardom with the song 'Homecoming' in 1984. Her biggest album was 1986's 'Bad Girl'. The album is the biggest selling Cantonese language record ever in Hong Kong. She had released 46 albums during her career. She sold more than 10 million albums in her 20-year career.

She later turned to acting and enjoyed success starring in films including The Heroic Trio and Drunken Master 2. Her portrayal of a tortured ghost in Rouge won her Taiwan’s Golden Horse Award in 1987. She starred in more than 40 movies over 20 years. Her most recent movie, The House of Flying Daggers, is expected to surface in 2004.

The unmarried star was known for her charity work. She set up the Anita Mui Charity Foundation in the early 1990s and during the recent SARS scare. Her elder sister, Mui Oi-fong, died in 2000, also from the same kind of cancer. She is survived by her mother, 2 older brothers and an older sister.

This quiet Okinawa-born artist incorporates his formal training in architecture ("my father didn't want me to be a starving artist") to have a unique perspective on animation to rank among the top animators and draftsmen working today.

He has an exceptional balance of high quality, superbly acted animation and astounding speed made him capable of supervising two characters simultaneously in his 20+ years at Disney.

He is known to continually produce works of enormous depth, subtlety, and range. His drawing style is so tight and refined that even his most rough work can look as if it were CAPS and camera ready.

Starting out in smaller animation houses in LA, this “quiet genius” is a versatile artist joined Disney Feature Animation to assist on the character of Dr Dawson in The Great Mouse Detective. One of his earliest mentors at Disney was the late Eric Larson.

Disney animator Ruben Aquino infuses difficult characters in movies such as "Brother Bear" with the magic of life.

Brother Bear's Denahi is drawn with strong Asian features, a specialty of Aquino's. Except for racial caricatures of the Japanese during World War II, American studios have generally avoided Asian and Asian American characters in animation. The narrower eyes and different facial proportions were supposedly unexpressive and hard to animate — beliefs Aquino dismisses. "I never doubted that an Asian face could be as expressive as any other, and I don't know why some people have assumed that it isn't."

Aquino took pains to ensure each of the Asian males had a strong individual presence that would distinguish him from the other two.

This acclaim artist has won/nominated for many of The International Animated Film Society's (ASIFA - Association Internationale du Film d'Animation) “Annies” – the animation equivalent of the Oscars.

PARTIAL LIST OF CREDITS
Brother Bear (2003) - Animation (David and Denahi)
Lilo and Stitch … Animation (David and Agent Pleakley)
Mulan (1998) ... Animation (Shan Yu, Capt. Li)
Pocahontas (1995) ... (Chief Powhatan)
Little Mermaid, The (1989) ... Animation (Evil Ursula)
Mac And Me (1988) ... Art Direction
Lion King (1994) (supervising animator: "Adult Simba")
Beauty & the Beast (1991) (supervising animator)
Great Mouse Detective ... (1986) (Dawson)
Black Cauldron, The (1985) (animator)
Oliver & Co …. Animation (Francis)
The Rescuers Down Under …. Animation (Jake)
Hunchback of Notre Dame …. Animation (Frollo)

JOE ZEE

A native of Los Angeles, California, Chew attended Stanford University for his undergraduate studies and earned his doctoral degree at the University of Southern California.

On June 10, 2003, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Norman Y. Mineta selected Russell G. Chew as Chief Operating Officer (COO) of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As the COO, Russell Chew oversees the operational and financial performance of the U.S. air traffic control system and the FAA’s research and acquisition programs.

Captain Russell Chew comes to the FAA from American Airlines, Inc. During his career with American he served as a line-qualified captain on the B-767, B-757, and MD-80 aircraft, and at the airlines’ Technical Flight Operations, where he managed the daily technical operations and regulatory requirements. Chew’s management experience also included systems development and engineering. In his last position at American Airlines, he managed the airline’s System Operations Control where he was responsible for directing the day-to-day operations at American’s central control center. He also oversaw the airline’s Strategic Operations Planning, which includes the evaluation, acquisition, and implementation of new aircraft and ground technologies for airline fleet and operations planning.

Russell Chew’s service to the airline industry included the Chair of the ATC Steering Committee for the Air Transport Association, the Chair of the Flight Operations Committee for the International Air Transport Association. He also served on the Board of Directors of ARINC, Inc. and ATN Systems Inc. His industry activities focused primarily on current and new federal air traffic control system requirements, technologies, and global air traffic control modernization programs.

Yuan Yuan Tan is one of the most celebrated ballet dancers in the United States today. Her graceful form has attracted the attention of magazines like W and VOGUE.

She was recruited at age 11 by the famous Shanghai Dance School in China in 1985 – ironically, her parents had a choice of a career in dancing or that of academic studies at a local public school. Since China’s ballet tradition came from Russia, her training reflected these influences.

Yuan Yuan's first international competition in 1991 was in Finland — where she won a silver medal. Other wins in international competitions include a gold in Paris and additional medals in Japan.

After spending six months in Stuttgart, Germany training – she joined the San Francisco Ballet in 1995, she first appeared on Opera House stages in the Nutcracker. Shortly thereafter, (upon Director Helgi Tomasson’s invitation) she dazzled San Francisco in a 1995 guest appearance at the Opening Gala. Two years down the line, she was named a principal dancer, the first such Asian-born soloist to enjoy that distinction.

Yuan Yuan's words of advice to a young dancer, "Ballet … is not only about technique … but that it is the way you move that tells the story. It is both the movement and the steps in between that connect a ballet. It is not only how many turns you do, but how the movement tells the story."