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Cast/Crew Bios

Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Producer, Director and Writer

A film scholar and filmmaker, Celine Shimizu  is Professor and Director of the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University. Her work focuses on social theories of power and inequality at the site of race, sexuality and transnationalism. She has written three books, edited two anthologies and numerous peer-reviewed articles in the top journals in cinema, performance, ethnic, feminist, sexuality studies and transnational popular culture in Asia and Asian America. Her research has received funding from the Social Science Research Council, The United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney and the Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. Her films have won national festival awards and are distributed by Progressive Films and Third World Newsreel. 

Rhacel Parreñas, Co-Producer

Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California. She is an ethnographer whose research examines experiences of migrant workers from the Philippines. She serves as interviewer for the film. Professor Parreñas has co-edited three anthologies and has written five monographs as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles. She has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and National Science Foundation, and fellowship invitations from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University. 

Daniel Chein, Director of Photography

Daniel Chein is an independent filmmaker and recipient of the 2017 Princess Grace Film Award. His most recent film Basha Man won the Student Film Award at CAAMFest2017. As an editor, his work on Changa Revisited earned the film the OutStanDox Award at the Astra Film Festival. Daniel is an Associate Producer for Walking Iris Media and a board member of the Global Lives Project. He is a recent graduate, completing his MFA in Cinema at San Francisco State University.

Jon Ayon Alonso, Editor

Jon Ayon Alonso is originally from Los Angeles, is currently based in Portland, OR. As a filmmaker, Jon Ayon began his career making music and promo videos and building flash websites for indie, punk, and hardcore bands in the Pacific Northwest. Eventually, he enrolled in film school at San Francisco State University (SFSU) where he graduated with honors. His short films earned him awards and recognition from organizations including The Annenberg Foundation, The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and American Zoetrope. His films have screened at HBO’s New York Latino Film Fest, the American Documentary Film Festival, and Sundance.