Editing Festival Accès Asie (section)

= History =

Festival Accès Asie, first formed as the Montreal Asian Heritage Festival, was founded on an Asian Heritage Month mandate established in the United States in 1976. This was further developed by the Toronto Asian Heritage Month Group in 1993. The national network of Asian Heritage Month groups and activities vary in mandate from arts presentations to forums, discussions to tributes of outstanding members from the Asian Canadian communities. The Montreal version of this mandate was revised to reflect Montreal's cultural climate.

Accès Asie was formed in 1995 to present all artistic disciplines in dance, comedy, theatre, video, film, visual arts, music, poetry, performance and new media. We feature artists with origins from over twenty countries : East Asia (Japan, China, Korea); Southeast Asia (Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore); South Asia (Pakistan, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka); Central & Middle Eastern Asia (Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan and Armenia).