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Local filmmakers based in Gainesville are causing a stir in Prince William County with their “interactive documentary” about the battle over immigration, currently one of the most popular sites on YouTube. Since starting the experimental project weeks ago, Eric Byler and Annabel Park have created a virtual town hall for spirited debate, threats of violence, and attempts at reconciliation for Prince William County residents concerned about the immigration issue.

“9500 Liberty” is named after Liberty Wall, the site of the half-destroyed banner in Manassas that reads “Stop Your Racism To Hispanics.” The series stars every-day citizens as well as controversy magnets like Chairman Corey A. Stewart and Help Save Manassas President Greg Letiecq. It chronicles the historic 12-hour Citizens’ Time on October 16 at the Prince William County government center, as well as more than two months of ethnic tension and civic activism that led up to it. One video installments has over 38,000 views, another over 25,000, attracting curiosity from as far away as Germany and Australia.

Raised in Burke, Va., Byler resettled in Gainesville a year ago, having spent a decade in Los Angeles directing films (including the award-winning indie romance “Charlotte Sometimes”). Byler noticed ethnic tension surrounding the immigration debate boiling to the surface in his community. “But watching pundits on TV and reading news articles about it left me with an anxiety that there must be more to the story,” he said.

Byler teamed with Korean American community leader Park to approach the immigration issue as a documentary film. Now, the interactive version of “9500 Liberty” is realizing a dream of Park’s to draw out public discourse for collective deliberation.

“When things are presented in a strict black-and-white dichotomy, we inevitably reach an impasse and it begins to degenerate into a power struggle, or a fight,” she said. “It’s an intellectual challenge, as well as a political one, to find a more proactive way of processing our lives.”

One “9500 Liberty” participant, Mpolo79 commented on the channel page, “There is something huge rising in our country and you guys are the means by which we are beginning to see it!”

Visit the site at www.youtube.com/9500Liberty.

The San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association (aajasf.org) will hold a blogging workshop on Saturday, November 10, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at UC Berkeley’s journalism school. Unfortunately, it’s the same day at the LEAP leadership conference (which hapihour.org is helping promote), so I won’t be able to attend.

AAJA-SF has a terrific lineup: tech blogger Robert Scoble, food blogger Amy Sherman, Chronicle TV writer/blogger Tim Goodman and Chronicle deputy managing editor for online Eve Batey. Great bloggers for sure, but no AAPIs on the panel?

The morning workshop will feature a panel discussion and then a hands-on demonstration in the computer lab. The workshop will provide some answers if you’re curious about blogging, don’t understand how it works, interested in learning how newspapers and TV stations are incorporating blogs, or wondering how it might enhance the work you do.

AAJA’s event listing on their website says that “blogging is a new form of journalism.” Some reporters I’ve spoken with are skeptical of bloggers as bona fide journalists. But many journalists are blogging away, including AAJA members Harry Mok, Ryan Kim, Ellen Lee, Benny Evangelista, Dean Takahashi, Vindu Goel and Tim Kawakami.

The Japanese American National Museum will begin a new series of collaborative exhibitions entitled Salon Pop by presenting Giant Robot Biennale: 50 Issues, developed in collaboration with Eric Nakamura of Giant Robot. The exhibition is being sponsored by the Imprint Culture Lab(tm), with additional support from the James Irvine Foundation.

The exhibit runs from Nov. 3 through Jan. 13, with a reception on Nov. 3 from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Japanese American National Museum in Little Tokyo.

Celebrating its 50th issue, the pop-culture magazine Giant Robot is proud to curate the Giant Robot Biennale: 50 issues, featuring artists with whom they have worked in the past, whether in the pages of the magazine or in the associated gallery spaces in Los Angeles, San Francisco, or New York City.

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Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach is throwing a farewell and appreciation party for (H)API Hour co-founder Victor Hwang, former managing attorney at API Legal Outreach and past AABA President. Victor has joined the San Francisco District Attorney’s office.

The event will be held on Friday, November 2, 2007, at 6:30 p.m., at the I-Hotel Community Room located at 868 Kearny Street, 3rd floor, San Francisco.

Please join APILO to say goodbye to a loyal advocate and dedicated community activist. Light food will be provided and drinks available no-host.

Suggested donation is $20 and all proceeds will go to API Legal Outreach. Please email questions to dhung@apilegaloutreach.org or to mjames@apilegaloutreach.org.

Leaders of Asian & Pacific Islander American Vote (APIAVote), a non-partisan non-profit civic engagement organization, today once again called for responsible reporting and portrayal of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) civic participation in the media.

APIAVote, an organization I am affiliated with, issued its statement today in response to an Oct. 19 Los Angeles Times story on donors to Sen. Hillary Clinton from New York City’s Chinatown — a story that irresponsibly painted a picture of a trend without the facts to support it.

Clinton was quoted in Newsday today saying: “I am pleased to have a lot of first-generation American support as well as people who have been longtime involved in the political process … I’m going to keep reaching out to everybody in our country. I want to be a president to everybody.”

Congressman Mike Honda issued a statement:

I am appalled by the irresponsible and biased portrayal of the Asian American immigrant community, published by the L.A. Times today. The reporting unfairly attributes selected individual cases to an entire ethnic community in a major metropolitan area. Such an unfair, sweeping, and negative portrayal has a significant chilling effect on the civic participation by all Asian Americans, who merely want their fair chance to participate in the American political process.

While I sincerely hope the reporting is airtight, the story lacked responsible sensitivity and, at times, even strained to turn the commonplace into the mysterious. For example, the story describes “…a woman named Chung Seto, who came to this country as a child from Canton province…” Anyone who has ever spoken with Ms. Seto, who I’ve known for many years, knows that she’s as New York as one can get. The story, however, paints her as a mysterious foreign figure, when in fact she has been a longtime established leader within the New York Democratic Party and is well respected in Democratic circles nationally.

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Susan Hsieh informed me via SMS that the City College of San Francisco board of trustees Thursday night approved several resolutions enabling the Chinatown campus project to move foward.

This represents a major win for a broad coalition, coordinated by Vin Pan and Susan at CAA, of over 100 community organizations and leaders in support of the campus has collected over 23,000 petition signatures and over 10,000 individual postcards demanding appoval last night.

For over 30 years, the San Francisco Chinatown community has fought for a permanent campus to provide generations of immigrant students with equal access to educational opportunities, such as learning English, preparing for citizenship exams, and acquiring job skills. Classrooms are currently scattered throughout a dozen deteriorating and inconvenient spaces, and at the primary location, students and faculty suffer debris falling on their heads and are forced to use child-size toilets.

Unfortunately, owners of the nearby Hilton Hotel, desperate to preserve their guest-room views, continued to dispatch high-priced lawyers and lobbyists in a ruthless campaign of opposition. Long on cash and short on scruples, they proclaimed “support” for a campus, while at the same time financing endless schemes to derail its progress.

The fight came down to the wire. The fate of the permanent campus rested in the hands of the seven elected members of the Board of Trustees: Natalie Berg, Anita Grier, Milton Marks, Julio Ramos, John Rizzo, Rodel Rodis, and Lawrence Wong. We’ll find out soon how which trustees voted to support the Chinatown campus.

Thank you all for your interest in the two free tickets to the 7pm showing of FINISHING THE GAME’s opening in San Francisco. There were 50 entries and the random number generated was #30, belonging to Leanne Koh.

Please check out this week’s FTG-related events, including parties on Friday and Saturday nights. And you can buy tickets for this weekend’s showings online.

See you at The Game!

Filmmakers Annabel Park and Eric Byler have launched a YouTube “interactive documentary” (www.youtube.com/9500Liberty) on the battle over immigration in Virginia.

“We’ve been on the ground in Northern Virginia and it really feels like a battle over America’s soul,” said Park in an email. “Our generation’s cultural civil war. Our hope is that our YouTube videos can help promote greater understanding and alleviate the hostility in Northern Virginia.”

The format is experimental and they’re inviting people to provide feedback and suggestions on what they’d like to see in the series.

Park and Byler are asking for your support: “In order to make a convincing case that we are having impact, we need to drive more traffic to your channel and show more interaction.”

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