Festival Accès Asie
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).
Accès Asie Structure
Accès Asie is administrated by Foreign Ghosts Society Inc. and is directed by a Steering Committee consisting of six members. Formed in 1994, Foreign Ghosts Society Inc. is a federal, charitable, chartered, non-profit organization and has been affiliated with Accès Asie since 1997.
The programming is directed by a Programming Team of five artists with specialized disciplined experiences, advised by the Steering Committee and finalized by the Board of Directors. The Steering Committee formed an Honorary Advisory Committee in 2003 to consult with and to increase our networking capacities.