As entertaining as it is thought-provoking, The Emoji Story, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival as Picture Character, looks at the role that technology companies play in regulating the emoji on our keyboards — and the grassroots advocates around the world who are pushing to make the keyboards more representative and diverse. While society often emphasizes the importance of representation on the Big Screen of Hollywood, this documentary movingly explains the power of representation on the Small Screen; on mobile devices that billions of people hold in their hands every single day.
Join MOFAD and Push Projects for a screening of The Emoji Story and a panel conversation led by the film’s producer Jennifer 8 Lee and several of the advocators responsible for food emoji representation. Lee will be in conversation with Yiying Lu, Sebastian Delmont, and Clint Adams, the forces behind the boba, arepa, and garlic/onion emojis respectively, about the social and economic power that food emojis hold.
Please note the panel conversation will be held over zoom on January 12th from 8-9pm EST. The zoom link will be in your ticket confirmation email.
A separate link for viewing the film will be emailed to ticket holders before the event.
CLINT ADAMS
Clint is an enthusiastic consumer of all edible members of the Allium genus. When not busy taking credit for the existence of garlic and onion emoji, he can be spotted enjoying other kinds of food and drink, not necessarily in that order.
SEBASTIAN DELMONT
Sebastián is a Venezuelan software developer living in New York City. When he's not busy proposing emojis (AREPA, OLIVE) and volunteering at Emojination, he has worked for all kinds of tech startups in agriculture, restaurants and real estate, among others, and co-founded StreetEasy.
JENNIFER 8 LEE
Jennifer 8. Lee is an entrepreneur, documentary producer, journalist, seed investor and emoji activist.
She is co-founder and CEO of Plympton, a San Francisco-based literary studio that innovates in digital publishing. Among their projects is Recovering the Classics, and a VR film based on George Saunders' Man Booker Prize winning novel, Lincoln in the Bardo.
A former New York Times reporter, Jenny is a producer of The Search for General Tso and Picture Character, both which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festivals,
She is also the author of the New York Times-bestselling book, The Fortune Cookie Chronicles (Twelve, 2008), which established fortune cookies are originally Japanese.
She is the founder of Emojination, a grassroots group whose motto is "Emoji by the people, for the people." As part of that organization, she successfully lobbied for a dumpling, hijab and interracial couple emojis among others. She cofounded Emojicon and is a vice-chair of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee.
YIYING LU
Born in Shanghai China, educated in Sydney Australia and London UK, currently based in San Francisco, Yiying Lu is an award-winning artist, entrepreneur, global educator, and bilingual TEDx speaker. She was named one of the Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Microsoft’s “Top 10 Emerging Leader in Innovation”, and a “Shorty Awards” in Design. Yiying speaks about Cross-Cultural Design, Creativity & Innovation in English and Chinese, at conferences such as TEDx, SXSW and Adobe MAX.
She has created iconic art and campaigns for brands from Disney to Microsoft, and built brands for hundreds of companies during her time as a creative director at 500Startups. She is also the artist behind the Dumpling & Boba Emoji and the “Twitter Fail Whale" and the Chinese paper-cut style Mickey Mouse for Disneyland Shanghai. Her life purpose is being the bridge between Art & Tech, Business & Culture, Work & Life, and East & West.
PUSH PROJECTS
Push Projects is a curation and cultural programming service that works across visual arts, moving image, food, tech, and music with an emphasis on diversity.