Hyde Park, Warner Music & Film Independent Name Winner Fast Track Fellowship Award

EXCLUSIVE: Ashok Amritraj’s Hyde Park Entertainment Group and Warner Music Entertainment, the film and television division of Warner Music Group, have announced the winner of the Hyde Park Entertainment & Warner Music Entertainment Fast Track Fellowship under their Asian Women Fellowship program.

Writer/director Tiffanie Hsu and producer Pin-Chun Liu were selected from an initial pool of ten finalists and received a $12,500 grant and development assistance. your winning project, wonderland, follows an intrepid ten-year-old as she embarks on a journey to track down her mother, who disappears in Las Vegas with the family’s bank account. With the help of a clever and ambitious wizard, she hopes to get her mother home in time for Christmas before her father finds out.

The initiative, run in partnership with Film Independent, aims to showcase female writers and directors who are Asian or part of the Asian diaspora and are ready to take their next step into the mainstream entertainment industry. Guided by industry consultants who are at the forefront of their fields, winners go on to develop and package their feature film projects with the ultimate goal of securing final scripts from major studios and streamers. The Fellowship aligns with Hyde Park Entertainment and Warner Music Group’s shared, ongoing commitment to diversity and inclusion.

Hsu said, “We are excited to be part of an initiative aimed at empowering Asian women to tell their stories. wonderland is of great importance to Pin-Chun and I – both through the short film we made together and the feature film we developed – and we couldn’t be happier to be able to launch it now with Hyde Park Entertainment and Warner Music Entertainment to don’t share Her belief that our story about family, love, all forms of compulsive behavior, and a little magic can reach a wider audience is why we do this work.”

Hsu added, “I remember as a young assistant recounting my dream of directing one day, but being discouraged because of my gender and race. I don’t hide those qualities, but I celebrate them and this Hyde Park/Warner Music Award is part of that.”

Sari Arambulo, the program’s first beneficiary, continues to benefit from intensive creative support and industry advice for her project Burgundianwhich is currently being developed as part of the ongoing program that began earlier this year.

In addition to the financial award, Fellowship winners will participate in Film Independent’s various laboratories, creative incubators and a mentoring program supported by Hyde Park Entertainment, Warner Music Entertainment and Film Independent.

Asian women are still underrepresented, both behind and in front of the camera. According to a survey conducted by the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative in 2021, of the last 1,300 major releases, only 1% were directed by women from underrepresented ethnic groups and only 7% of the main characters were of Asian background. The program will be overseen by a Hyde Park-based team led by Priya Amritraj, VP of Film & TV, and Carl Clifton, Head of Hyde Park International.