INFO
| Name | Pan-Asian Screen Collective |
| Also known as | PASC |
| Established | 2018 |
| Artform | Screen |
| Decades Active | 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
The Pan-Asian Screen Collective (PASC) is a not-for-profit, membership-based group established in 2018 to “support, promote and advocate for practitioners of Pan-Asian descent in the New Zealand screen sectors.”
PASC was co-founded by screenwriter, producer and film academic Shuchi Kothari; screenwriter and director Roseanne Liang; producer Selina Joe; and journalist and editor Gilbert Wong. The collective was publicly launched on Tuesday, 28 August 2018, to coincide with a preview screening of Crazy Rich Asians – at the time of its release, a milestone for Asian representation in mainstream Hollywood cinema.
PASC’s mission is for the “cultural landscape to honestly and equitably reflect pan-Asian faces, creativity, expertise, experience and history on screen and behind the camera.” Its formation was driven by two key factors: research and reporting of under and/or misrepresentation of Asian people and stories in screen media; and statistical evidence of funding and development gaps in screen work by Asian creatives, for Asian audiences.
In a 2018 Newsroom story on the founding of PASC, Roseanne Liang explained the idea for the collective began after ten years had passed since the making of A Thousand Apologies, the first Asian TV series produced in Aotearoa. “Nothing’s moved for a decade. The time is now. If we don’t do something, it will just be at a standstill again for another 10 years.” In the same article, a lack of funding applications from Asian creatives cited by the New Zealand Film Commission was interrogated by Liang. “Pan-Asian screen practitioners need to be hungry for these opportunities, but they’re not seen on screen so it’s become a subconscious bias that they don’t belong on screen.”
Shuchi Kothari shared similar thoughts on the root causes of such disparities in a 2019 interview published on Medium, emphasising that the role of PASC was to “also point out structural blind spots within a system that lets these inequities flourish in the first place...Diversity on screen is not about ‘showing different people’ – it’s about the level of inclusivity in an organisation or an environment or within systems of power.”
Members of PASC gain access to professional development opportunities, including training, mentoring and networking, alongside invites to events that help build a collaborative community of emerging and experienced screen artists. As of December 2023, there are 800+ members in Aotearoa across 34 Asian ethnic groups.
PASC is funded by the New Zealand Film Commission and NZ On Air, a partnership through which it gains “a seat at the table at key forums for policy, training and funding to ensure pan-Asian screen practitioners are represented.” Its advocacy through these channels has successfully addressed the diversity gap highlighted in successive reports (2021, 2022) from NZ On Air, influencing direct investment in content such as Creamerie ($1.7 million), created by Roseanne Liang, Perlina Lau, JJ Fong and Ally Xue for TVNZ, and Homebound 3.0 ($1.4 million), written by and starring Sam Wang for TV3. Since its inception, the collective has also backed two major initiatives: Short Cuts, a development lab for short film scripting and funding, and Episode One, a web series programme that produced five high-end pilot episodes by five teams of Asian creatives.
Megan Blackwell — a New Zealand Chinese practitioner with a background in communications, digital media and photography — is PASC’s current General Manager, succeeding Johnny Hui and Marc Laureano. PASC’s board members are Gilbert Wong (chair), Andrew Yee (treasurer), Shuchi Kothari, Roseanne Liang, Alyssa Medel (producer, actor), Sophie Dowson (producer, video commissioner), Marc Laureano (writer, director) and Milon Tesiram (producer, cinematographer).
