Kevin Lau
Film Media Arts Person
KEVIN LAU is a writer and director born and raised in Los Angeles to working-class, immigrant parents. A Regents Scholar at UCLA, Kevin honed his craft in music and photography before dedicating his artistic pursuit to filmmaking. A former theatrical film distributor and film festival programmer, Kevin left California in 2009 to pursue his filmmaking ambitions at Columbia University's MFA Film Program where he received numerous awards and fellowships, including the coveted Faculty Select prize--the highest honor bestowed upon a feature-length screenplay. His thesis film, MADE IN CHINATOWN, was a recipient of the Panavision New Filmmaker Grant, SimonSays Entertainment Award for Innovative Filmmaking, and has won multiple awards on the festival circuit, including Best Film, Best Writing, and Best Actor at the NBCUniversal Shortcuts Competition.
Kevin recently completed a screenplay set in Hollywood's Golden Age for Emmy-nominated actress Lucy Liu, and is currently developing a television series about America's Gilded Age as seen through the eyes of the first Chinese-American gangster, as well as a first feature to direct set in Cambodia during the rise of the Khmer Rouge. He has also been selected as one of four Program Fellows for Sony Pictures Television's inaugural Diverse Directors Program and has most recently been awarded a CAPE New Writers Fellowship under the mentorship of Tony Award-winning playwright David Henry Hwang. Kevin currently resides in Brooklyn and, in his spare time, dreams of becoming an NBA superstar.