On Friday, March 24th, we at Kaya Press hosted our annual Visions and Voices event, this year with a theme of Anarchy in Asian America: Sex, Punk and Transgressive Cinema!

The evening started off with a spectacular panel featuring the likes of directors Gregg Araki, Roddy Bogawa, and Jon Moritsugu, as well as producer Marcus Hu. Considering they have a collective pool of movies with titles such as Psycho Beach Party (Marcus Hu), Totally Fucked Up (Gregg Araki), Taken By Storm (Roddy Bogawa) and Mod Fuck Explosion (Jon Moritsugu), these filmmakers could easily be described as the “bad boys” of Asian American cinema. The movie quartet talked back and forth for an hour about their own individual transgressive filmmaking styles — and their deep early connection.

After the panel reached it’s conclusion, everyone headed over to Tommy’s Place, a performance space at the heart of the USC campus, for the absolutely #lit afterparty. The rest of the night was soundtracked with the searing music of SISU and the wondrous messiness of Low On High (Jon Moritsugu pulling double duty with Amy Davis!)

It was a night filled with radical filmmaking and live wire punk rock and we can’t wait to see what’s in store for next year’s event. Super huge thanks to Kaya Press Research Assistant Christopher Chien who produced the event with grace.

(All photos by Natalie Ng)