If you have the latest issue of Hyphen -- and you should -- then most likely you've gotten your swoon on over cover model Jake Shimabukuro, ukelele player extraordinaire and subject of a forthcoming documentary by filmmaker Tad Nakamura.

This week marks the DVD release of Tony Lam's documentary Vincent Who?. The film gauges the progress (or lack thereof) of Asian America decades after the brutal murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit and the unjust acquittal of his killer, a laid-off auto worker who had mistaken the Chinese American engineer for someone of Japanese descent.

Ah, yes. That eternal question: What can I do with an Asian American Studies degree?

As an Asian American Studies masters student, I ask myself that every day as I sustain myself on 90 cent Chinese buns and try to slog through chapters on intersectionality and heterogeneity. 'Tis a glamorous life.

But a bunch of cool folks at Claremont Graduate University -- specifically the CGU Transdisciplinary Studies Group on Asian American Studies -- decided to put together a free, one-day conference for students in the Asian American Studies field who want to know where they can take their knowledge when they hit the professional or academic path. It ain't a business degree, but that doesn't mean there aren't options for the Asian American Studies afterlife, particularly in academia, community/non-profit, and media.

This week, we're highlighting blogger Cynthia Brothers. You know Cynthia as our intrepid events blogger, the one who gives us the scoop on all the happening Asian American events happening across the nation and gets us to contemplate actually putting on a clean shirt and leaving the house to be social.

PBS's Independent Lens series will be premiering Christopher Wong's 2009 documentary Whatever It Takes tomorrow, March 30 (Check the link for your local listings).

The filmmakers were kind enough to send Hyphen a screener of the film (which I sadly missed at 2009's SFIAAFF), and I definitely recommend catching it while it airs from tomorrow into early April.

Are you a filmmaker that identifies as hapa/mixed or Asian/Pacific Islander? Do you want to submit your work to a festival that is not going to charge you an entry fee?

The latter was a silly question. If you're an indie filmmaker, we already know you're broke!

The Japanese American National Museum is accepting film and video submissions for their third annual ID Film Festival, set to take place October 7-10, 2010 at the Tateuchi Democracy Forum theater in downtown Los Angeles.

Here at Hyphen we're lucky enough to have a roster of bloggers who contribute their smarty-pants writing and help us maintain a strong online presence. As part of continuing efforts to develop the blog, we'll be highlighting our bloggers to give you a sense of who they are as people and as writers.

Many of them write on their own blogs such as our newest Hyphenite, Catherine Shu, who has been blogging at her own site Shu Flies since 2007. Her thoughtful writing on the Taiwanese American experience in Taiwan won her a 2009 Taiwan Best Blog award by her fellow English-language blog peers. She moved to Taipei in August 2007 to study Mandarin and now works as a features reporter at the Taipei Times, an English-language newspaper. Catherine will be blogging here a few times a month, covering culture, race, fashion and diaspora in addition to her work on Shu Flies. Get to know her and one of her previous posts below.

Hey there, budding Asian Pacific Islander American screenwriters: dry those eyes, buck up, and dust off that short screenplay that's been sitting in your apartment. The good folks at Visual Communications are partnering up with the Writers Guild of America, West for the 2010 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival Short Screenplay Competition, to promote API writers or writers who craft stories about the API community.

The lovely folks at CAAM have released their line-up for the 28th annual San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival, which means Bay Area folks should be prepping for 10 days of unadulterated Asian American viewing pleasure to tide them over until...well, probably July when
The Last Airbender comes out. I kid.

If big budget productions based on cartoons ain't your bag and socially-conscious films are more your speed, you're in luck.

Making its world premiere at this year's SFIAAFF is The Oak Park Story, a documentary short that captures the lives of a predominantly Southeast Asian and Latino community in an East Bay slum.

I usually try to keep a professional demeanor when I discuss film here on Hyphen, but I just have to say...

Karan Johar's My Name is Khan looks fan-fricking-tastic.

Back in '07, Harry blogged about MYX stepping up to bat as the next Asian American channel to try to sustain itself and not go the way of its brethren AZN and IATV. (The latter is still available in select regions but seems to focus more on Asian pop culture than Asian American programming.)

This is a bit early, but if you've been waiting to see Asian American festival favorites White on Rice and/or Children of Invention on the big screen this spring, you're in luck. Both films are available on DVD, but getting these films into a theater proper makes more of a statement in terms of recognizing new Asian American cinema within the industry and allowing moviegoers to it. 

The films will be part of a double bill, debuting at the BIG Cinemas Manhattan in New York City on March 12, 2010 as part of a partnership between Variance Films and Big Cinemas .

Children of Invention will also simultaneously run at the Brattle Theater in Boston and at the Downtown Independent in Los Angeles.

Learn more about the films here:

www.childrenofinvention.com
www.whiteonricethemovie.com

To our Bay Area readers: hope you'll be able to support the Campaign For Ethnic Studies' efforts to bring culturally- and community-relevant education to the diverse students of the San Francisco Unified School District. Show up to the SFUSD school board meeting Tuesday, January 12 at 5:00 pm.

Keep reading for pertinent info from the Campaign for Ethnic Studies:

Alexander Sebastien Lee's engrossing debut documentary The Real Shaolin removes the glossy Hollywood veneer from the ancient martial art of kung fu and highlights the lives of four students living and training at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province, China.

The film follows 9-year-old Yuan Peng, an orphan who's left in the care of monks; Orion, an American teenager who comes to China for serious training; Zhu, the son of poor farmers who wants to use his Sanda skills (a Kung Fu sport similar to kickboxing) as a means to a career; and Eric, a Frenchman eager to learn the secrets of Kung Fu but is growing impatient at the wait.

DVDs are a fail-safe holiday gift. Because when you've absolutely run out of things to talk about with your loved ones (aside from how you've gotten fat, how your brother's hairline is receding, and your sister's parole violation), popping in a DVD kills hours of awkward, fuming silence.

Since the recession hit, much attention has been focused on banks, politicians, economists, and the myriad of theories on what sunk us and what will lift us out. In their documentary The Recess Ends, filmmaking brothers Austin and Brian Chu look at the recession through a revolutionary lens: a human one.

Now, if there's one thing I haven't seen a cinematic representation of, it'd have to be a crackhead Korean mama. In fact, I can't recall seeing a modern day Asian American character as a drug addict (not opium addicted or trafficking drugs) in recent memory. In Ian McCrudden's The Things We Carry, Korean American actress Alyssa Lobit (also a co-writer with sister Athena Lobit) stars as Emeline Roberts, a daughter long estranged from her drug-addicted Korean mother Sunny (Alexis Rhee) and who, along with her sister Eve (Catherine Kresge), struggles to find peace with her death.

If you caught Michael Kang's West 32nd on the festival circuit last year or conversely are pissed that you didn't get to catch West 32nd on the festival circuit last year, you're in luck.