About the film

A Clean UA is a documentary short by the Southeast Asian Young Men's Group. The film follows Peter Phan, a 17-year-old Vietnamese American, as he decides to quit marijuana. Using a hand held camera, Peter journals the difficulties and challenges of his path to recovery while exploring the benefits of being sober.

Peter begins his film just after he's suspended from school for smoking marijuana during lunch break. He's determined to quit marijuana "cold turkey," but he's not expecting the difficulties that arise from quitting: pressure from friends, loneliness, and symptoms of withdrawal. Peter filmed his documentary over a six-month period, and with his film, he aims to promote more open dialogue about this issue with his peers and other youth in his community.

See this article about Peter's film in the Northwest Asian Weekly.

About the program

The Southeast Asian Young Men’s Group is part of Asian Counseling and Referral Service, a non-profit organization in Seattle, Washington. This group serves Southeast Asian high school-aged boys primarily from refugee families -- Cambodian, Cham, Hmong, Khmu, Lao, Mien, and Vietnamese -- and works to connect the youth to their families, culture, school, and community through in-school support groups, after-school and summer programs, and its film project.

Film project participants meet weekly to learn about documentary filmmaking; this includes identifying topics, planning a project, taping and editing their movie.  The group is "hands-on," and the young men take the video equipment off-site to work on their projects throughout the week.  ACRS has operated this project since 2007, and past films cover topics such as alcohol dependency, teenage gambling, youth gang violence, bicultural identity, and the "Model Minority Myth."  The participants have had the opportunity to screen their completed films at ACRS, area high schools, community colleges, universities, and community and cultural events.

Please see this Seattle Times article about past projects of the Southeast Asian Young Men's Film Project.

Also, watch this interview with our Development Director on Comcast Newsmakers to learn more about the many services that ACRS provides. 

Our fundraising goal

The film is almost complete, but we don't have much time! Our first public screening of the completed film will be in February in Washington D.C. at the annual Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) national conference!

After our students showed a preview of Peter's film at the WA State Youth Forum, the Forum participants selected the Southeast Asian Young Men's Group for the grand prize which included a partial scholarship to attend the CADCA leadership conference in Washington DC. We then applied and were selected to present the film at the conference! We are excited about this opportunity and with your help, we hope to have the best documentary possible!

We need to raise funds for post-production; this will cover the music, editing/production assistance, and equipment rental for several interviews the documentary still needs.  Additionally, the $2800 will help cover our trip to the CADCA conference in DC.  We only received a partial scholarship, and we are in need of these additional funds for our stay!

Any funds raised beyond our goal will go directly back into the program! We operate the Southeast Asian Young Men's Film program on a small budget, and our capacity is limited! Your donations will help us serve additional youth, so thank you!

How you can help

• Donate to the program!  We only need 93 people to donate at the $30 dollar level to reach our goal!!!
• Help get the word out by sharing this campaign with your friends on Facebook!
• Or Twitter!
• Or your blog!
• Use the share tools on Indiegogo's website!
• And remember, we are non-profit - so donations are tax-deductible!