Susan Xie

Susan joined CIE Operations Team in 2019 and was the ticketing manager for the 2019 Los Angeles Film Festival. She is now the co-leader of the Operations Team. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with degrees in Film and Media Studies as well as Applied Mathematics and Statistics. She is now pursuing a MFA degree in the Film and Video program in California Institute of the Arts. She is an independent filmmaker who has specific interest in experimental film and video arts. She has internship experience in both feature film and TV show production.

Mark Liu

Mark Shuangyi Liu is a composer for commercial music. He writes music for films, animations, and video games. The short films he involved as a composer, "Prey" and "Molly" have been shortlisted for several Oscar-qualifying film festivals. Mark has joined the Chinese in Entertainment since its inception in 2017 and has served as a director in the operations and production team of previous Los Angeles Chinese Film Festivals.

Xuan Zhang

Xuan is an independent documentary filmmaker. She graduated from Iowa State University, and jumped into film industry from her major of Mass Communication. As an independent producer, she has worked with Bob Balaban, Leonard Nimoy, Lily Tomlin, Matt Groening. Also, she has produced several documentary TV series in the U.S for CCTV. She was interviewed by Wall Street Journal and Phoenix Television for her documentary Over The Rainbow. Xuan joined LACFF in 2018, and has worked in programming team since then.

Leky Lin

Leky Lin is a trilingual (EN/CN/ES) producer with expertise in film Co-production ranging from development, production, marketing, and distribution. Currently, he founded and worked as CEO of International film education and president of the international production in Spring Up Films, which has produced <Luz>, <The Hunters>, and <The Bridge to Paradise>.

Before Spring Up Films, He worked as an independent producer between China and the US and has produced 2 feature films and 10+ award short films.

Vanessa Zhu

As an aspiring entertainment marketer and publicist, Vanessa was the Community Partner Manager for LACFF 2019, leading a team of four in developing press release, managing relationships with partner organizations, and handling all kinds of media requests. This year, she is the Co-director of CIE’s Marketing & PR Team.

She has previously worked at a La Liga soccer club, an international fin-tech company, and a post-production agency. Her experience in Spain, China, and LA brings her a global perspective and a unique understanding of multicultural communication. Vanessa studies Communication and Applied Linguistics at UCLA and is currently interning with the National Publicity team at Paramount Pictures.

Baifan Xie

As the production manager of an upcoming Hulu animation series, Baifan is in charge of developing and managing all production schedules including writing, storyboards, animatics, animation and post while maintaining day-to-day communications between creatives and department leads. As the former programming director and co-chair of the Los Angeles Chinese Film Festival, Baifan oversaw the film selection process, screening schedules and the awarding procedure. She also acted as festival liaison with filmmakers and jury members. Baifan earned her MA degree in Television, Film and New Media Production from San Diego State University.

Rui Xu

Rui Xu is an LA based interdisciplinary creative producer committed to supporting daring voices and innovative forms that facilitate practices of independent filmmaking. She started her producing career while pursuing her MFA degree in creative producing program at California Institute of the Arts in 2017. She was a Sound designer and engineer for films after graduating from NYU. Rui’s first short film, Hieu, premiered at 72th Cannes International Film Festival, won Deuxième Prix of Cinéfondation Selection. Rui’s first feature film project, World of Tales, won the MPA Award at Beijing International Film Festival in 2019. The film stars Kang-sheng Lee, a recipient of Golden Tiger Award from Rotterdam Film Festival, is now in its postproduction. She is currently producing the post-production and distribution strategy for Way Out Ahead of Us, an elusive hybrid about family set in Southeastern California.

Athena Bowe

Athena co-founded LACFF/CIE, bringing her expertise in international audience reception and sino-U.S. relations. She spent years helping the big 6 film studios and top gaming studios in China U.S. enter new markets and conduct go-to-market research. In her early career, she staffed and directed multiple international educational conferences of 700+ people across China. These experiences and her research on audience reception during her time at Harvard studying East Asian Studies and Social Anthropology informs her work today as the head of Research and Development for a short form digital media start-up in downtown LA.

Tian Guan

Tian Guan earned his MFA degrees from Syracuse University and California Institute of the Arts. His films have been screened at numerous of prestigious film festivals around the world and awarded “Best Live Action Short Film” at the 30th Warsaw Film Festival, “Best Short Fiction” at 2015 LA Film Fest, "Louis le Prince International Film Award" at Leeds International Film Festival, etc. His film was also collected by John Hopkins University MICA Film Center. He served as primary jury at 2018 FIRST International Film Festival Xining. His first feature script SHEEP THREE entered the 2019 HAF Film Lab.

Vivian Bao

Vivian Bao is a producer/director. She earned her MFA degree in Film/Video from California Institute of the Arts and enrolled in the directing exchange program with La Femis, France. As a producer, she engaged in many short films that went to numerous film festivals. From 2018, she worked for Shanghai Linmon Pictures. and engaged in several feature projects.

Jiacheng Wang

With a background in finance, Jay brings a full suite of business and professional skills that well complements this otherwise creatively talented organization. As an investment banker specialized in the media & entertainment industry by trade, Jay has working knowledge about film & TV production, distribution and finance, as well as general accounting, corporate finance and valuation. Jay will oversee the accounting, financial review and budgeting of CIE, and continue to spearhead the sponsorship outreach efforts which he successfully led in the inaugural film festival. 

Yue Wang

Yue Wang is an award-winning producer born and raised in Chengdu, China. Speaking multiple languages, she studied in Bulgaria for 6-years before moving to the U.S. where she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in Film Production from Full Sail University. Yue has gone on to produce many American and Chinese co-productions working along side of Academy award-winners/nominees and with major networks/studios such as CBS, NBC/Universal, iQiyi, Tencent, and Alibaba.

Jin Guan

Jin Guan graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with double majors in Political Science and East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Upon graduation, Jin moved to Shanghai to work for Bain & Company as a management consultant for 2 years. After that, Jin decided to join the Film and TV industry to pursue his story-telling passion. He established himself as a rising creative producer after producing a hit web series co-produced by iQiyi, resulting in more than 36 million views. Jin later developed and produced streaming platform films and reality TV series that generated more than 1 billion total views online. As a bilingual and bi-cultural producer, Jin strives to tell stories with Chinese cultural elements/themes to a global audience. To achieve this goal, he deeply believes in doing everything in his power to help build a platform that empowers Chinese talents in arts and entertainment. With this mission in mind, Jin joined CIE in 2019 as a development team volunteer and has recently been elected the organization's executive director. Jin currently works as a Creative Content Producer at a sports lifestyle short-form content platform in Los Angeles.

Fengyun Zhang

Fengyun Zhang is a Ph.D. student in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles researching transnational cinema. She has an MA in Cinema and Media Studies from UCLA and a BA from Zhejiang University in Communication Studies. Her current research focuses on the intersection of transnational cinema and industry studies. More specifically, the transnational circulation of Chinese language cinema in the United States. She also has a long-term interest in Chinese contemporary art and topics concerning gender and sexuality. Joining LACFF volunteer team this year, she currently serves as a programmer and panel coordinator in the film festival. She eager to enhance her observation and engagement in film culture on the local LA Chinese community and global scales.

Ahren Jin

Ahren Jin is a Computer Science student at UCLA. He is an active member of UCLA ACM and Upsilon Pi Epsilon. He has been working as a Software Development intern at IBM China System Center, and is dedicated to implementing services that bring positive changes to people’s lives. He has co-organized several events, including UCLA New Student Send-off in Beijing and the Greater China Hire at UCLA. 

Tristan Lu

With a background in Entertainment law, Tristan knows ins and outs of the entertainment business not only as an entertainment lawyer, but also from multiple perspectives. Used to work for an international entertainment firm and currently the BD Manager of a cross-border Accelerator, Tristan joined the LACFF team and serve as the Director of the Finance Team, in responsible of sponsorship and finance of the group.  Tristan is also an enthusiast of public services and has extensive experience with other NPOs and NGOs. He graduated from USC Law School.

Wanquan Hao

Wanquan is a graduate student majoring in communication management at USC and finished her bachelor’s degree in advertising from Renmin University. She is responsible for community outreach for the film festival and sometimes writes social media articles. Due to her Interest in visual content, she is currently looking for opportunities to learn more about the entertainment industry. Before joining the LACFF team, Wanquan has interned at several media companies, worked as marketing intern for Weibo and data analytic intern for Nielsen Media Research. Also, She was once an account intern for Ogilvy & Mather.

Nicole Chen

Nicole (Xinyuan) Chen is currently a second-year master student at USC East Asian Studies Department, focusing on Chinese and South Korean visual culture studies. She is originally from Shanghai, China and received her Bachelor degree of Arts from Shanghai International Studies University. With great interest in media communication and event planning, she has participated in various events such as music and film festivals, and worked as an intern in theatre and broadcast station. Having accumulated multiple overseas experiences and language skills, she would always love to make her own contribution to the cultural exchanges and eliminating discriminations between Chinese and other cultural contexts.

Sherry Liu

Sherry is an avid marketing and public relations professional with agency, corporate and startup experience across film, technology, e-commerce and luxury retailers in the U.S. and Asia. 

Her passion for the entertainment industry has brought her to the United States to learn and explore the innovative entertainment business. Her experience in the film industry includes roles at Lionsgate, Global Road, Akiva Goldsman's Weed Road Pictures, Allied Global Marketing and Brattle Film Foundation.

Before this, Sherry served at KKday, a Series B+ e-commerce startup based in Taipei which provides unique worldwide local tours. She helped KKday spearhead business development and communications strategies for the Chinese market. Preceding her work at KKday, Sherry was a marketing specialist at Shin Kong Mitsukoshi, Taiwan’s largest high-end department store where she developed marketing initiatives for sales events. Sherry holds a M.A. from Emerson College, Boston.

June Tan

June Tan focuses her practice on domestic and international entertainment and corporate transactions within the motion picture and television industries. She counsels production companies, distributors and investors in connection with the development, production, distribution, and financing of feature film and digital media projects. She also has significant experience structuring and negotiating entertainment content licensing and talent deals. A native Mandarin speaker, June has been involved in a number of sophisticated motion picture and television financing and structuring transactions on behalf of Chinese entertainment clients doing business with Hollywood.