Showing posts with label Dallas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dallas. Show all posts
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Wednesday, November 17, 2021
Pegasus Media Project Provides One-of-a-Kind Career On-Ramp to Dallas’ Aspiring Film Artists
A new apprenticeship program, in partnership with The Alliance of Media Arts + Culture and Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas, provides a direct career merge for young adults from underserved communities.
When Joey Lee graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, he felt excited about his future. He had created a portfolio of his strongest work and started to look for work in the advertising industry. Unfortunately, the work never came along with COVID. Ultimately, Lee returned home and to the unfulfilling job he had left prior to attending college.
“I was kind of lost, stuck,” Lee says. “It’s funny. I had just started thinking to myself that maybe the film industry was something I wanted to get into, just because I like writing and telling different stories.” That’s when Lee heard about Pegasus Media Project, and he applied on the spot. The first program of its kind offered in Dallas and, in fact, in the nation, the Pegasus Media Project apprenticeship program is designed to give young adults like Lee a pathway into the film and media arts industry.
While Dallas-Fort Worth boasts the state’s largest creative economy at $34 billion and over 200,000 jobs, pathways to those careers were built on a culture of unpaid internships. “But even with paid apprenticeships available, many people still need an on-ramp to qualify for them,” says Wendy Levy, Executive Director of The Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, the national program sponsor for Arts2Work.
In the spring of 2021, Arts2Work, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas and Pegasus Media Project partnered to provide access to creative careers to people traditionally excluded from those opportunities. Apprentice Caodan Tran is one of those individuals. “Being Vietnamese-American, I wish I had seen more stories like mine growing up,” she said. “This is something I’ve always wanted access to. I just didn’t know how to get there besides going back to school.”
In launching the program, Arts2Work partners MIT Solve, New Profit, the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas and Adobe provided a $250,000 cash and in-kind investment in the Dallas pilot program, seeding Pegasus Media Project as a certified Arts2Work Training Center. The equipment and infrastructure have been vital to a program serving Dallas’ most underrepresented and underserved communities. Over 15 weeks, film educators, teachers and mentors working in the industry not only trained apprentices in equipment use and technique but quickly set them up to begin telling their own visual stories.
Lee’s mentor, Dallas filmmaker Jake Hochendoner, says he leaped at the opportunity to work with the apprentices. “I had mentors early on who helped me get to where I am today,” said Hochendoner. “Without those mentors, I would have probably struggled to find myself, find my place, find my voice and be validated as an artist.”
As part of their on-the-job training, Pegasus Media Project apprentices also made films for local performing arts groups, working together telling powerful stories to bring Dallas audiences back to theaters again. “We want to provide avenues for becoming an individual entrepreneur but also to have the option to hyper-focus on one skill and move into the workforce,” said Daniel Laabs, an independent Dallas filmmaker and lead mentor. “We want to give them as many options as possible and make them as hire-able as possible.”
Having completed the program, Lee says the experience has been meaningful for him and he hopes it will be a springboard to new opportunities for him.
“This program has blown me away,” said Tran, who said the skills she learned through the program felt like the missing link for her. “I have been so grateful.”
Photo Credit: PegasusMediaProject, Xenia Matthews, apprentice, on location shoot at Sate Fair of Texas, photo by Niloo Jalilvand
When Joey Lee graduated with his Bachelor’s degree in Mass Communication, he felt excited about his future. He had created a portfolio of his strongest work and started to look for work in the advertising industry. Unfortunately, the work never came along with COVID. Ultimately, Lee returned home and to the unfulfilling job he had left prior to attending college.
“I was kind of lost, stuck,” Lee says. “It’s funny. I had just started thinking to myself that maybe the film industry was something I wanted to get into, just because I like writing and telling different stories.” That’s when Lee heard about Pegasus Media Project, and he applied on the spot. The first program of its kind offered in Dallas and, in fact, in the nation, the Pegasus Media Project apprenticeship program is designed to give young adults like Lee a pathway into the film and media arts industry.
In the spring of 2021, Arts2Work, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas and Pegasus Media Project partnered to provide access to creative careers to people traditionally excluded from those opportunities. Apprentice Caodan Tran is one of those individuals. “Being Vietnamese-American, I wish I had seen more stories like mine growing up,” she said. “This is something I’ve always wanted access to. I just didn’t know how to get there besides going back to school.”
In launching the program, Arts2Work partners MIT Solve, New Profit, the Alliance for Media Arts + Culture, Workforce Solutions Greater Dallas and Adobe provided a $250,000 cash and in-kind investment in the Dallas pilot program, seeding Pegasus Media Project as a certified Arts2Work Training Center. The equipment and infrastructure have been vital to a program serving Dallas’ most underrepresented and underserved communities. Over 15 weeks, film educators, teachers and mentors working in the industry not only trained apprentices in equipment use and technique but quickly set them up to begin telling their own visual stories.
Lee’s mentor, Dallas filmmaker Jake Hochendoner, says he leaped at the opportunity to work with the apprentices. “I had mentors early on who helped me get to where I am today,” said Hochendoner. “Without those mentors, I would have probably struggled to find myself, find my place, find my voice and be validated as an artist.”
As part of their on-the-job training, Pegasus Media Project apprentices also made films for local performing arts groups, working together telling powerful stories to bring Dallas audiences back to theaters again. “We want to provide avenues for becoming an individual entrepreneur but also to have the option to hyper-focus on one skill and move into the workforce,” said Daniel Laabs, an independent Dallas filmmaker and lead mentor. “We want to give them as many options as possible and make them as hire-able as possible.”
Having completed the program, Lee says the experience has been meaningful for him and he hopes it will be a springboard to new opportunities for him.
“This program has blown me away,” said Tran, who said the skills she learned through the program felt like the missing link for her. “I have been so grateful.”
Photo Credit: PegasusMediaProject, Xenia Matthews, apprentice, on location shoot at Sate Fair of Texas, photo by Niloo Jalilvand
Monday, October 29, 2018
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
Sheed Persian Film Festival
This is the 2nd year for the Persian Film Fest. Last year, this same group (AramArt Institute in Plano) screened the Academy Award winning Best Foreign Language film, THE SALESMAN in North Texas. These films are of the same calliber as they are making their way around the world in the Festival Circuit. Many of these films will have their USA premiere here in Dallas.
Organized by artistic director Shahram Mokri, festival director Arameh Etemadi and festival founder Ehsan Matoori, Sheed will include an acting workshop, six films for public screening and a competitive section featuring nine acclaimed Persian movies and a memorial for the deceased Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. Persian cinema, and especially Iranian cinema, has been witnessing the emergence of several young and admirably ambitious directors during the past decade. A mixture of young and experienced directors and a different look at the basic elements of cinema has made Iranian movies have a brilliant performance on the international scene.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Expanded Cinema IV – Sunday, Oct. 25 at 8 pm
Expanded Cinema is a program of video art works wrapping the exterior of the Dallas Omni Hotel with audio simulcast by 91.7 KXT. This year’s edition, curated by Justine Ludwig, Director of Exhibitions/Senior Curator at Dallas Contemporary, will consist of works by artists from across the country addressing the inter-relationship of memory and place. Artists include Andrea Sisson, Andrew Scott, Jeff Gibbons, Gregory Ruppe, Jordan Tate, Wyatt Niehaus, Chris Collins, Joey Versoza, Michael Morris, Rick Silva, Darryl Laster, Pierre Krause, and Kris Pierce.
Each piece has been specifically designed for display on the large exterior LEDs on the Omni Hotel. Expanded Cinema, first presented in 2012, was named the number one art event in Dallas by several local news publications and attracted media attention worldwide. This year, Expanded Cinema will close VideoFest in the week after the festival on Sunday, Oct 25 at 8 pm. This unique public art project has already added cultural prestige to the City of Dallas.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
Dallas VideoFest Begins October 12, 2015
Dallas VideoFest once again has a great line up of films. This year, they are screening over 100 videos from national and international directors, including narrative and documentary features, shorts, animation, and experimental videos.There's a reason why D Magazine has named them the best film festival in Dallas!
For more information and schedules, visit their Website.
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