WeiyingOliviaHuang

Film director/producer

Press Release

‘Art in Public’: Film explores the relationship between creativity and enhancing community

Monday, December 5, 2022, By Talia Franks

Many might consider art just a tool to beautify a space. “Art in Public,” a feature-length documentary film about Cambridge-based public art, illuminates ways art allows us to see the world differently. The arts not only serve to beautify, but to elicit emotion and allow us to understand and empathize with experiences outside our own. Art can also help us connect more deeply with others with whom we identify...

Documentarian Olivia Huang: Brings graffiti right up your alley

July 27, 2022,  by The Somerville Times

I have had the pleasure to interview former Somerville resident and documentary filmmaker Olivia Huang a number of times. And I have even appeared in a documentary she did about the Grolier Poetry Book Shop some years ago. Now Huang turns her discerning eye on Graffiti Alley in Cambridge, with her new documentary, City as Canvas: Above the Free Walls. I attended a screening of the film, and later chatted with Huang....

Filmmaker Weiying Huang Receives Grant for Her Next Film after Best Human Interest Documentary Award

May 27, 2021, bostonese.com

Boston, May 27, 2021, — Congratulations to filmmaker Weiying Olivia Huang for receiving a 2021 Cambridge Arts grant for her next documentary. Overseen as part of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, this program supports art projects representing the wealth of artistic activity throughout the city of Cambridge....

How to celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month

By Diti Kohli Globe Correspondent, May 6, 2021

PROJECTING CONNECTIONS: CHINESE AMERICAN EXPERIENCES  With three short films available on demand through May 10, this series from Arts Emerson allows viewers to learn about lived experiences of the Chinese in the Greater Boston Area and beyond. .......and Weiying Olivia Huang’s “Meditations on the Power of Community,” featuring dance created by Pao Arts Center 2021 artist-in-residence Lenora Lee Dance, are screening.......

Doug Holder interviews documentary filmmaker Olivia Huang

2019 - Poet To Poet/Writer To Writer

Somerville Community Access TV Show "Poet to Poet/Writer To Writer" (Tuesdays Channel 3 5 PM ) Host: Doug Holder. Many of these shows are archived at the Lamont Library Poetry Room at Harvard University, for scholars and the general public to view. We explore the creative process and the work of local poets and writers. Each guest will get a video of the show upon request.

Directory Huang Speaks at Cambridge Public Library

Posted byD Victor Chen, bostonese.com

Boston, Sept. 6, 2019, — A good documentary film can bring a topic into focus by the public, and might also save a historical bookstore. On Tuesday this week, the Cambridge Public Library of Massachusetts invited Chinese international filmmaker and director Weiying Olivia Huang to hold a documentary film screening and discussion of “Grolier Poetry Book Shop: The Last Sacred Place of Poetry”. The symposium also invited a well-known poet of Massachusetts, Doug Holder, who is the founder of Ibbetson Street Press, to participate in a discussion with Director Huang after the screening.

‘Last Sacred Place of Poetry’ honors Grolier, fragile treasure, at a free screening Tuesday

By Tom Meek

Friday, August 30, 2019

As the oldest continuously running bookshop dedicated to poetry in America, Harvard Square’s Grolier Poetry Book Shop has hosted T.S. Eliot, e.e. cummings, Robert Lowell, Anaïs Nin, Seamus Heaney and Robert Pinsky. Now, with new concerns about the shop’s legacy since the death of owner Ifeanyi Menkiti this summer, comes a screening of Weiying Olivia Huang’s documentary, “Grolier Poetry Book Shop: The Last Sacred Place of Poetry.”

Filmmaker Olivia Huang: She sees the graffiti on the wall, and the spirit of poetry at the Grolier

On August 14, 2019, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

A screening of The Last Sacred Place of Poetry and talk with Olivia Huang and Doug Holder will take place on September 3, 6:00 p.m., at the Cambridge Public Library.

When I first met Olivia Huang she was in the midst of making a documentary about the famed Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square titled The Last Sacred Place of Poetry: Grolier Poetry Book Shop. And I was proud to be one of the talking heads in this film about the much-revered shop.

WHY THIS HIDDEN ALLEYWAY IS

by Khalida SarwariJune 7, 2019

Weiying Olivia Huang walks up to the middle of an alleyway that’s nestled between a restaurant and a Korean supermarket and bursting with gradations of color and light. She puts down her bag.

Fragmented beams of blue and yellow pour down from the plastic panes of a stained glass canopy and bounce off her long shiny black hair as she sets up her tripod and pivots a camera toward Lamar ‘Prop’ Atkins. She presses “record.”......

Filmmaker Huang Receives Grant for a Graffiti Art Documentary

bostonese.com Online Journal / Posted byEditorApril 10, 2019

Boston, April 8, 2019, — Renowned filmmaker Weiying (Olivia) Huang has received a grant for a documentary film in 2019. As part of the grant program of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency, this funding was awarded the ough the Cambridge Arts Council. Huang is a director and producer with a background in fine arts and graphic design.

INSTAGRAM-FAMOU

The Boston Globe

DOCTALK

By Peter Keough GLOBE CORRESPONDENT  AUGUST 09, 2018

"Poetry can contain the whole world, but can it pay the rent? That’s the nagging question in local filmmaker Olivia Huang’s short documentary “Grolier Poetry Book Shop: The Last Sacred Place of Poetry” (Aug. 25 at 8 p.m.). Founded in 1927, the Grolier is the oldest bookstore dedicated solely to poetry — and may be the last. A one-room establishment packed with books in the heart of Harvard Square, it is a cultural landmark that has hosted such luminaries as E.E. Cummings , T.S. Eliot , Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, Marianne Moore, Robert Pinsky, Lloyd Schwartz, Adrienne Rich, Ruth Stone, and many others."

The Boston Globe

Film recounts Grolier story; playing catchup with Mass Book Awards 

By Nina MacLaughlin GLOBE CORRESPONDENT  AUGUST 17, 2018

Focus on Grolier Poetry Book Shop The potent, diminutive Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square is the subject of a tender new documentary directed by Weiying “Olivia’’ Huang and Mengyuan Lin, which will screen as part of the Massachusetts Independent Film Festival this week. The Grolier, which celebrates its 90th anniversary this year, is the longest operating poetry-only bookshop in the country, and the storied space has been a gathering spot for some of poetry’s brightest luminaries — T.S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, E.E. Cummings, Jorge Luis Borges, William Carlos Williams. “The Last Sacred Place of Poetry,’’ filmed almost entirely within the store, features interviews with local poets like Ben Mazer, Patrick Sylvain, Susan Barba, Gloria Mindock, and owner Ifeanyi Menkiti and Carol Menkiti. It also examines the struggle to keep it operating. On a good day, sales could be $300-$400, explains Grolier employee Elizabeth Doran; a slow day means about five books are sold. Menkiti uses his own money to help keep the shop afloat. More than anything, it’s a portrait of an institution and the passionate community that wants to keep it alive. The film screens Saturday, Aug. 25 at 8 pm at the Arlington Regent Theatre.

The Somerville Times

Somerville’s Olivia Huang celebrates the Grolier Poetry Book Shop with a new documentary

On November 8, 2017, in Latest News, by The Somerville Times

By Doug Holder

"Olivia Huang, a young filmmaker from Guandong China, (a southeast coastal city), who now resides in Somerville, has produced and directed her first documentary titled Grolier Poetry Book Shop: The Last Sacred Place of Poetry."

Podcast: From the Bloc 11 Cafe: Doug Holder interviews documentary filmmaker Olivia Huang

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 01, 2017

 Huang talks about the documentary she produced " Grolier Poetry Book Shop: The Last Sacred Place of Poetry," at the Bloc 11 Cafe in Somerville, MA. with Doug Holder .   Podcast: The Grolier Poetry Book Shop: The Last Sacred Place of Poetry  link  https://ia801504.us.archive.org/13/items/IMG0020_201710/Z0000018.MP3

Get in touch

© Copyright OliviaHuang