Media Factory’s Marissa Aroy and Niall McKay garnered an Emmy award for their documentary, “Sikhs in America,” in the category of Best Historic/Cultural Program.
The 26-minute PBS documentary profiling the Sikh community in the United States will air nationwide in May as part of the Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and will be broadcast on KQED on May 19th at 7.30 PM. The program takes a look inside the Sikh community, its religious traditions, home life, and working life and provides a rare view of unique traditions such as arranged marriage and dating. Please check your local PBS listings for exact dates and times. Produced by the Media Factory’s Marissa Aroy and Niall McKay, the documentary is narrated by NPR Radio host Sandip Roy.

Irish Filmmaker Wins Emmy

National Distribution

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About the Program: KVIE webpage

Article on Sikh Net

Article in New Post India

Press Release

Sikhs in America Credits

Press Kit

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The program will be airing nationwide in May as part of PBS’ Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Please check your local PBS station listings for the exact time for the show. In the Bay Area, KQED will air the program on Sunday May 4th at 1:30 pm. Last year, the premiere broadcast of Little Manila: Filipinos in California’s Heartland received high ratings. The program produced by Marissa Aroy highlights the vibrant history of Filipinos in Stockton and is part of the Viewfinder Series.

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Filipinos: Forgotten Heroes of the UFW sheds light on the Filipino farm labor leaders who played a major role in organizing the United Farmworkers. The program follows filmmaker Marissa Aroy’s journey as she puts together the story of her grandfather’s role in the Filipino community in Delano, and what the strikes meant to him and the rest of the community. When union leaders Larry Itliong, Phillip Vera Cruz, Pete Velasco, Andy Imutan came into town, how did things change in the small agricultural town? Using archival footage, dramatizations, and interviews with key leaders, participants, and historians, the film weaves the gripping untold history of The Great Delano Grape Strike in 1965 and how Filipinos leaders began the walkout.

Media Factory was recently given two research and development grants for the documentary. One grant was received from The Independent Television Services (ITVS) and another was won from the California Council for the Humanities.

The Media Factory just completed shooting a 20 part comedy series for Canal Clase, a Spanish Language television station that servers the US market. The program is designed to teach English and will air in Argentina and in the US this summer. Production Photos

The Media Factory has produced a series of video podcasts for Wired Magazine’s famed “Fall TEST Issue”. This video review of Apple New iPhone and is the first of eight video podcasts. Please scroll down the page to view the video.

And this video reviews the Archos Media Player

And this video reviews the Canon HV20 Cannon HV 20

And this video reviews the Sony Vaio Laptop

And this video reviews the Yamaha Single Speaker System

And this video reviews the HP Blackbird 002

Irish journalist Niall McKay accompanies his father, Jim, a Jazz bass player on his return home from Zurich to Dublin following the death of Jim’s second wife Anna in a story about one retired immigrant’s search for love, adventure and a place to call home. The Bass Player fuses the genre of Jazz music documentary, personal artistic narrative and a road movie as Jim and his son Niall pack up his apartment in Zurich, wave goodbye to his in-laws and drive from Switzerland, through the picturesque towns and villages of Brittany in Northern France on way to Ireland. Through the journey, the film examines the Irish emigrant’s struggle with aging, family and the concept of home and shows the relationship between improvising Jazz music and life.

Awards

Irish Film Board

2007 Arts fellowship from the Irish Arts Council

Treatment & Proposal

To see the Kaleid piece, go to “Kaleid,” on the KQED SPARK web site.

As Silicon Valley’s next-door neighbor, San Jose is often considered prime stomping grounds for techies and corporate desk jockeys — not necessarily the sort of place one would expect to find a burgeoning underground art movement. The Media Factory’s Niall McKay produced this piece for KQED Television in San Francisco.

Star reporter Lee West investigates the confusing world of ‘Carbon Offsets’ in the latest Center For Investigative Reporting and Media Factory series of reports on the environment.

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In this Frontline World piece, “Sounds of Hope,” broadcasted April 9th, Media Factory producer, Marissa Aroy, journeyed with Serene Fang and Monica Lam to see how the organization, Sounds of the Earth, (Sonidos de la Tierra) brings children and their family members hope and joy with music.

Irvine Welsh’s film Nuts is a dark comedy. Underneath the obvious comic elements there are bigger issues at play. Notably, the much overlooked men’s health issue of testicular cancer, and the closet racism among the professional Irish middle-class. Ireland is a country that has just undergone dramatic changes, and the comfortable materialistic world that Dominic has built around himself is about to fall apart. This short film is novelist and screenwriter (Trainspotting) Irvine Welsh’s directorial debut. The film was produced by Emer Martin and Niall McKay.

Official Selection
Edinburgh International Film Festival
Cork Film Festival
Raindance Film Festival

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To see the M dot Strange piece, go to “M dot Strange,” on the KQED SPARK web site.

Despite his sudden rise to international fame, Michael Belmont, also known as M dot Strange, advocates that life is simply better with ice cream. His feature-length film “We Are the Strange” is about two outcasts who risk going to the evil city to get ice cream. Among many things, they encounter monster ambushes, giant robot attacks, and explosions. The Media Factory’s Niall McKay produced this piece for KQED Television in San Francisco.

To see the ADAM 5100 piece, go to “Adam5100,” on the KQED SPARK web site.

Adam5100 has been working with a spray can since his days as a teenage graffiti writer living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Confessing that his early tagging was “the blight of society,” Adam5100 has since become one of the Bay Area’s most talented young painters. Spark joins the artist as he prepares for an exhibition at the White Walls Gallery by “layering the stencils of life.”

Program Highlights (Ten Minutes)

Show to teach women language and business skills needed to start a business in the United States

C.E.O Women Featured on ABC TV

The Media Factory produced The Grand Café an educational telenovela for the Oakland-based non-profit, Creating Economic Opportunities for Women (C.E.O. Women). The series is designed to teach immigrant and refugee women in the Bay Area both English language and entrepreneurial skills to start their own businesses.

Niall McKay wrote, produced and directed this news report for the Discovery’s new cell phone channel.

A new short fiction film shot by novelist and filmmaker Emer Martin (Breakfast in Babylon) and starring Maria Hayden (Bloom) (The Dead) and produced by Niall McKay and the Media Factory. The movie features novelist Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) as a social worker who finds a traumatized young boy from Africa on the streets of Dublin. The film was produced by Niall Mckay.

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Robot Get My Soda

The Media Factory wrote, directed, edited, produced and filmed this video podcast for Lego Mindstorms NXT robot division. Lego wanted to market Lego Robots to a cool urban audience. We put our man Lee West on the job and he came up with the “Bro’bot.”

Download to Mobile

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New Migrants
The high-tech industry has brought diversity, prosperity and racial tension to the Emerald Isle. The Irish like to welcome visitors with the Gaelic phrase “Cead Mile Failte” meaning “100 thousand Welcomes” but foreigners who want to stay in Ireland may not get such a warm welcome. In the past five years, tens of thousands of new immigrants have arrived to work in Ireland’s booming economy. This is a story of how the New Ireland will cope with new affluence and the ensuing multiculturalism.

Paycheck Records Podcast

To see the Turnhere piece, go to “The Tenderloin: San Francisco” on the Turnhere.com site.

Notorious for drugs and prostitution, the Tenderloin also boasts some of the best budget ethnic restaurants, hippest bars and trendiest Clubs in San Francisco.

It’s a question that has dogged man since the beginning of time. Are we alone in the universe or are their other forms of life out there? Well at NASA, scientists are asking that very question. In this new report for Discovery Channel Online the Media Factory visit NASA.