AMA History

AMA started with the St. Paul Companies' Leadership Initiatives in Neighborhoods Award to the founder Ange Hwang in 1992. The award encouraged her to investigate the Asian American programming in television, of course there was very limited programming, except few documentaries shown at PBS. With the lack of in-depth portrayals, media may foster prejudices and promote anti-Asian biases, therefore she organized community people to form the Asian Media Access in 1993.

The mission of AMA is to Connect the Disconnected, to examine how the media can better serve the diverse Pan Asian American communities, as well as to find innovative ways of increasing these communities' participation in the media.

Yet, because of its basic design and financial structure, media often remains inaccessible to a large number of citizens, especially minorities. "Media Access" is our way of referring to various educational workshops and practices which break down these barriers and enable participation and understanding of media by under-served populations. Asian Media Access believes democratization of media access is necessary to increase tolerance and understanding among all ethnic groups.

In this spirit, Asian Media Access implemented programs which included production of the award-winning cable series, "East Meets West," a weekly examination of cross-cultural issues; workshops and camp to teach media production, leadership skills, and critical thinking to Asian Pacific American youth.

In 1994 Fall, Asian Media Access began a Hong Kong film series called "Cinema With Passion" shown at the Riverview Theater. This series was well attended and generated a large amount of support for Asian Media Access. The film programming is designed to create an atmosphere of inter-generational and inter-ethnic communication. While this successful series continued, Asian Media Access expanded to film festivals featuring other Asian film industries such as Japan, Korea, Iran, mainland China, etc.

Furthermore, Asian Media Access harbors hopes for the construction of an Asian American production studio that would increase both the quantity and quality of the media programs. In conjunction with these long term plans, Asian Media Access would also like to acquire their own movie theater that would allow for more scheduling freedom and flexibility as well as provide a much needed community forum and gathering space for Asian Americans.

With so much dreams and potentials, Asian Media Access is continuing to be the promotional voice of Pan Asian Americans in the Midwest.