Honored to be a @tafilmfestival pitch competition finalist! Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my feature film pitch “Uproar”. It’s a story I’ve poured my life into. Logline below. Hope to see you all 11/16: —— #TAFF2019 is proud to announce our Pitch Competition finalists & their projects 🔥 In alphabetical order, our fourth finalist is James Y. Shih; James is paired with mentor @henrybdle. Come to watch James's live pitch session on Nov 16, 2019 at The Downtown Independent. . ========= Logline ========= UPROAR is a feature length, 1999 drama that follows shy, high school junior Sean Chang, when on the way to Winter Ball, he finds that his troubled best friend Wes Wu has taken Sean’s girlfriend and the entire dance hostage by gunpoint. In order to get his girlfriend and other students to safety, he must find a way to get inside the gym and talk Wes down or subdue him. . ========= Finalist Bio ========= James Y. Shih is the son of Taiwanese immigrants and grew up in Milpitas, California. James started as an actor performing in high school plays and later at UC San Diego where he majored in Economics and minored in Theatre. At UCSD, he performed in the 1st Annual Asian American Theatre Festival and the play "Bus Stop" by Chinese émigré, Gao Xingjian. After undergrad, James attended the National Taiwan Normal University to study Mandarin while also working as an actor (Silent Left Hand) and TV production assistant (The Amazing Race). Upon returning to the USA, James attended community college for cinema (De Anza College, City College of San Francisco) and in 2015 moved to Los Angeles to attend graduate school at Cal State Northridge where he earned his MFA in Screenwriting. James is the producer of acclaimed feature films “Fight Life” (2012) the MMA documentary and the Sundance award winning sci-fi film “Advantageous” (2015). James is passionate about telling personal, Asian/Asian-American stories such as “Ahma & Alan" (2019, 23 min), a story about a Taiwanese grandma that has to pull her American grandson out of jail, filmed in Taiwan. James is the writer and director of @ahmaandalan which is currently on its festival run. (at The Downtown Independent) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3vm0r0JGvM/?igshid=8ebyosxs5dus
