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Fil-Am-directed film on gangs to highlight US racism against Asian Americans amid COVID-19

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Anjo Bagaoisan, ABS-CBN News

<div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2020/entertainment/08/10/20200810-dynasty-boys-1.jpg?ext=.jpg"/><figcaption>Chris Soriano directing a scene from the film &quot;Dynasty Boys&quot;</figcaption></figure></div><p>At 13 years old, Filipino-American Chris Soriano was hazed into a gang in his neighborhood in San Diego, California.</p><p>It was also his first encounter with drugs, being offered crystal meth at the backseat of a car. </p><p>&quot;I never wanted to join a gang. I was just at the park one night, and a group of guys picked me up and they said, &#x27;Yo, if you wanna hang with us, you gotta fight this guy.&#x27; I didn&#x27;t wanna fight him, they jumped me, they beat me up. And in the end they said, &#x27;Welcome to the family,&#x27;&quot; Soriano said. </p><p>But after a year of getting into fights and witnessing shootings, his Filipino mother decided to move him away and homeschool him. </p><p>It was that environment of violence and racial tension that Soriano, now 31 and an aspiring filmmaker, wants to capture in a movie that he began shooting amid the coronavirus pandemic. </p><p>Entitled &quot;Dynasty Boys,&quot; the movie centers on a group of Asian Americans who band together and push back against hate crimes from gangs in their community.</p><figure class="op-interactive"><iframe height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0cUwwGNL1EU?enablejsapi=1" width="560"></iframe></figure><div class="iwantbar">Watch more in <a href="//www.iwantv.com.ph/">iWantv</a> or <a href="//tfc.tv/">TFC.tv</a></div><p>Soriano drew from his experience writing the screenplay. </p><p>Aside from directing, he plays the main character Allan Mendoza, whose character is also Filipino American.</p><p>Prior to making the movie, he worked as a journalist where he again encountered crime and violence in the stories he covered. </p><p>&quot;These stories are never shared, they&#x27;re never told and I&#x27;m pretty much sharing a light of why someone may even join a gang, perhaps if they&#x27;re with the wrong crowd, or why a 13-year-old tries this crystal meth or smokes it, or do whatever you want with it, and how it can lead you to all sorts of negative choices,&quot; he said. </p><div><strong>ADDRESSING RACISM</strong></div><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2020/entertainment/08/10/20200810-dynasty-boys-2.jpg?ext=.jpg"/><figcaption>The group of Asian Americans leading &quot;Dynasty Boys&quot;. Courtesy: Dynasty Boys LLC</figcaption></figure></div><p>Soriano said the film gives a voice to the experiences today of Fil-Ams and Asian Americans in general. </p><p>It&#x27;s a perspective, he said, that needs to be amplified in the United States as it faces both an unending surge in coronavirus cases and the continuing struggle of the &quot;Black Lives Matter&quot; movement. </p><p>The movie&#x27;s trailer includes moments where the characters are called derogatory names, such as &quot;COVID-looking ass&quot; -- and not by white Americans but by fellow minorities.</p><p>Soriano said he and people he knows have all experienced racism egged on by the pandemic. </p><p>For instance, people put on face masks when passing by them. Though not Chinese, they&#x27;ve experienced being told to return to China, where COVID-19 first emerged. </p><ul class="op-related-articles">	<li><a href="https://news.abs-cbn.com/ancx/culture/spotlight/06/20/20/filipino-journalists-in-the-us-recall-the-day-a-white-man-told-them-youre-disease-carriers">Filipino journalists in the US recall the day a white man told them: ‘You’re disease carriers!’</a></li></ul><p>&quot;Whether you&#x27;re Asian, whether you&#x27;re Black, everyone is experiencing racism to a certain degree,&quot; he said. </p><p>&quot;I want to promote peace and I want to raise awareness of what&#x27;s happening here and there seems to be a problem that&#x27;s snowballing into something bigger. If we don&#x27;t raise these issues and awareness now, pretty soon we&#x27;ll see more people being set on fire like we had with the old lady in New York. I mean, what&#x27;s next, you know?&quot; </p><div><strong>IDENTITY STATEMENT</strong></div><div class="embed-wrap"><figure data-feedback="fb:likes,fb:comments"><img src="http://sa.kapamilya.com/absnews/abscbnnews/media/2020/entertainment/08/10/20200810-dynasty-boys-3.jpg?ext=.jpg"/><figcaption>Chris Soriano plays lead character Allan Mendoza. <em>Courtesy: Dynasty Boys LLC</em></figcaption></figure></div><p>&quot;Dynasty Boys&quot; also tackles Asian Americans&#x27; struggle for an identity of their own in a cultural melting pot.</p><p>It mirrors Soriano&#x27;s own dilemma growing up, knowing he was Filipino because of his parentage but also being told later on by others that he was either American or Asian. </p><p>&quot;There&#x27;s a lost identity there that I think a lot of my fellow Filipino-Americans lose,&quot; he said. </p><p>&quot;Our main character... learns a little more about his identity and his culture. Is he Pacific islander? is he Asian? Where does he belong when people start calling him &#x27;Go back to China,&#x27; and he&#x27;s like, okay, where&#x27;s my heritage here?&quot; </p><p>For Soriano, putting a Fil-Am character like Allan Mendoza as the lead of a movie is a statement of ethnic identity as well. </p><p>&quot;We never see that in Hollywood films. I&#x27;m doing this for the first time for us. Same way Manny Pacquiao fights for us, I feel like I&#x27;m fighting for us in this way,&quot; he said. </p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/BTS?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#BTS</a> with <a href="https://twitter.com/chrissoriano?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chrissoriano</a> getting the raw emotion. 📷: @hillarayma <a href="https://t.co/nhQSSuMG8h">pic.twitter.com/nhQSSuMG8h</a></p>— Dynasty Boys (@DynastyBoysFilm) <a href="https://twitter.com/DynastyBoysFilm/status/1290687902880395265?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 4, 2020</a></blockquote><div><script async="" src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charSet="utf-8" type="text/javascript"></script></div><p>Soriano is crowdfunding financial support through his website <a href="http://www.dynastyboys.com/">DynastyBoys.com</a>, <a href="http://facebook.com/DynastyBoys">Facebook</a>, <a href="http://instagram.com/DynastyBoys">Instagram</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/DynastyBoysFilm">Twitter</a>.</p><p>He hopes to raise at least P50,000 to finish the movie by the end of 2020. </p><p>Beyond the representation, the filmmaker said the movie hopes to resonate everyone, whether they are Asian American or not. </p><p>&quot;The message is, people can continue to bully you, people can put you down and you may grow up at a really tough area, but you gotta understand that you have choices. And these choices will define you. </p><p>&quot;So no matter what happens in your life, no matter how hard it is, always try to figure out and discern and make a positive choice in your life so you can have a better outcome.</p><p>&quot;And if you could see what I went through and what these characters went through, hopefully it could inspire you to change your life and empower yourself.&quot; </p>

<p>At 13 years old, Filipino-American Chris Soriano was hazed into a gang in his neighborhood in San Diego, California.</p>

At 13 years old, Filipino-American Chris Soriano was hazed into a gang in his neighborhood in San Diego, California.

Fil-Am-directed film on gangs to highlight US racism against Asian Americans amid COVID-19

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Fil-Am-directed film on gangs to highlight US racism against Asian Americans amid COVID-19

Anjo Bagaoisan,

ABS-CBN News

Published Aug 10, 2020 04:04 PM PHT

Read More:

film

movie

filmmaking

Filipino Americans

overseas

racism

Black Lives Matter

Asian Americans

Chris Soriano

Dynasty Boys

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