Conversations

Bryan Koh’s love for Southeast Asian cuisine has led him on an intense food trail to record the lesser-known cuisines of the region that may soon be forgotten.

In 2021, the Mekong Institute won the ASEAN Prize; a prestigious regional award conferred annually to a citizen or an organisation that has significantly contributed towards ASEAN community-building efforts.

Long before experts sounded the alarm bells on depleting mangrove forests, Roberto Ballon, fondly called “Ka Dodoy,” and his fledgling group of fishermen were already knee-deep planting mangrove trees in their coastal community of Concepcion in the Municipality of Kabasalan, Province of Zamboanga Sibugay.

Southeast Asia’s enduring tradition of handwoven textiles took centre stage at the recently held TENUN Fashion Week. This inaugural event was held online in the trend of digital fashion weeks as a response to COVID-19 restrictions. It was organised by the ASEAN Handicraft Promotion and Development Association (AHPADA) and Tanoti—a Malaysian accredited socialenterprise dedicated to heritage craft preservation, women empowerment, and rural community building. The event was supported through the Maybank Foundation’s Women Eco-Weavers programme and also by the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture Sarawak, Malaysia.

Elaine Chan, honorary secretary-general of AHPADA and co-organiser for TENUN Fashion Week 2021, shares her experience with The ASEAN.

Miguel “Mike” Alcazaren wears many artistic hats— animator, filmmaker, screenwriter, and comic book series creator. He began his career as an animator, co-founding a stop motion animation company with his brothers in 1989. The company is the first of its kind in the Philippines and produced experimental films, ads, and title sequences for TV shows, many of which earned national and international recognition, including the prestigious New York Festival Award.

Mike branched out into the world of live-action commercial directing in 1995, working mostly in a freelance capacity. He has since built an impressive portfolio of popular and award-winning television ads. In 2013, he wrote, directed, and produced his first feature film, “Puti” [White]. The film was screened at a national film festival and was also an entry at the 32nd Brussels International Film Festival.

Mike’s first foray into screenwriting, which focused on the incarceration and trial of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. during the Ferdinand Marcos regime, won him the country’s prestigious Carlos Palanca Memorial Literary Awards. He recently wrapped up a popular, self-published Filipino zombie comic book series, “Patay Kung Patay” [Death be Damned].

Freelance documentary photographer Joshua Irwandi became the talk of the town when his photograph of a solitary plastic-wrapped corpse of a suspected COVID-19 victim in an Indonesian hospital was published by the National Geographic in 2020. “The Human Cost of COVID-19” photo quickly went viral and sparked a controversy in Indonesia. For this image, Joshua was nominated as a finalist of The 2021 Pulitzer Prize in Breaking News Photography.

Joshua pursued his graduate studies in photojournalism and documentary photography at London College of Communication. He was the recipient of the National Geographic Society COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists and Forhanna Foundation Grant for Young Talent in 2020. This year, Joshua received numerous recognitions, including the 2021 World Press Photo Award, Grand Prize of Lucie Foundation Open Call, and Best Single Photo in Citizen Journalist category of the Anugerah Pewarta Foto Indonesia. Joshua was recently selected as a mentee in the VII Photo Agency Mentor Program 2021-23 Cohort.