Featured Events

"The Adoptees"

The Adoptees | Sneak Preview

For the first time, adoptee Mike Frailey will screen the nine minutes of his in-progress documentary, The Adoptees. At the age of 8, Mike was evacuated from Vietnam on the first unofficial Operation Babylift flight operated by World Airways. The film follows Mike’s journey to reconcile his past, examine the stories of his fellow adoptees, and search for his birth family in a deeply personal exploration of identity, family, and belonging. This sneak preview will be presented alongside the film’s co-director Derrick Owens with a conversation and Q&A to follow.

Filmmaker Mike Frailey, Derrick Owens

Andrew Lam: Writing Workshop

"Andrew Lam is a Bay Area Vietnamese American essayist and the author of 4 books and over hundreds of literary essays. His first book, a memoir, Perfume Dreams, won the Pen Beyond Margins Award in 2011 and his third, Birds of Paradise Lost, a collection of short stories, won the Josephine Miles Literary Award and was the finalist for the California Book Award in fiction. His latest, Stories from the Edge of the Sea, is set in the Bay Area and explores love and lost among Vietnamese Americans haunted with memories of war and the subsequent diaspora. A long time contributor to Huffington Post, Lam spent 8 years being a regular commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered. A PBS documentary called “My Journey Home” followed him back to his native homeland, Vietnam in 2024. His essays and short stories are widely anthologized. He spends his time between Vietnam and San Francisco, and is working a novel.”

"Intersections"

Filmmaker Tran Van Kirk closes the last evening with his film "Intersections". See more about his film in an interview with Kenneth Nguyen here.

Tran VanKirk, "Kirk", has a diverse professional background that includes a storied career in Law Enforcement, Photojournalism, and Multimedia Marketing for Non-Profit Organizations. He is currently a Multimedia Communications Professional and UAS Pilot in the Communications Department of the City of Virginia Beach, Virginia. He has an AA in Photojournalism and a BA in Mass Communications from Austin Peay State University.

Kirk is the Creator, Director, and Executive Producer for the multi-award-winning “Intersections” Docu-series, which highlights the lives of Amerasian children born in Vietnam during the war and who were, in many cases, orphaned and adopted into families around the world. The series also shares the stories of the men, women, and military service members that helped shape their lives. The pilot episode of “Intersections" has won multiple awards including Best Inspirational Film from the 2022 Cannes World Film Festival and received a Silver Telly in 2023 for the category of long form documentary in the 44th Annual Telly Awards.

Kirk is the recipient of several awards related to his professional photojournalism and film making experience including, but not limited to several Emmy and Telly awards for his photography, filming, editing, and directing accomplishments across a diverse genre of subject matters. His passion is telling stories through photography and film.

Kirk co-founded and served as the President of the Southeast Asian Coast2Coast Foundation (SEA2C) whose mission is to reconnect adoptees from the war in Vietnam with their birth families and to provide emotional healing for active-duty U.S. military combat personnel and Veterans.

Kirk resides in the beautiful coastal community of Norfolk, Virginia. He volunteers in his local community by serving as an Executive Board Member for the East Ocean View Civic League. When he’s not working, he enjoys long distance running, CrossFit training, fishing, surfing, boating, and most importantly of all, quality family time.