Composer & Vocalist

LEONA LEWIS

Composer

CHAD CANNON

Director 

VIOLET FENG

MODERATED BY BYRON BURTON

(The Hollywood Reporter, Awards Focus)

Screening Link available upon Registration

YouTube Live Stream Q&A 

Monday, January 9, 11:00AM (PT)

Spanning past and present, Hidden Letters follows two millennial Chinese women connected by their fascination with the ancient, secret language of Nushu developed by women in southern China, and their desire to protect it. NR | 89mins

Leona Lewis is a British global singing sensation who has sold over 35 million records worldwide. The singer, songwriter, actress, and philanthropist reached #1 in over 35 countries with her hit single “Bleeding Love”. A vocal powerhouse who is renowned for her vocal range and ability, Lewis is a three-time Grammy Award nominee, a seven-time Brit Award nominee, MTV VMA, and a World Music Award winner, and has been nominated for MTV EMAs and Billboard Music Awards. Lewis has been named the UK’s biggest-selling debut album by a female ever! She became the first British female solo artist to top the US Billboard 200 album chart in more than 20 years with her debut album Spirit. In 2022, Lewis co-composed and appeared on the soundtrack for the Oscar-shortlisted, female-directed documentary Hidden Letters which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. In the same year, she collaborated with Alexis French on the classical crossover single “One Look” – whose music video garnered more than one million views in its first few days of release. Lewis is currently back in the studio working on new music.

Chad Cannon is a composer who was born and raised in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake City and is a product of the American West. Recent credits include the Obama-produced, Oscar-winning documentary American Factory, the Oscar-shortlisted Hidden Letters, HBO’s genre-bending true crime series, Mind Over Murder (directed by Nanfu Wang), and Sony PlayStation’s Ghost of Tsushima (Iki Island Expansion). Fluent in Japanese, Cannon has a close working relationship with Joe Hisaishi, including doing arrangements for the globally-performed Joe Hisaishi Symphonic Concert: Music from the Studio Ghibli Films of Hayao Miyazaki. Current composing projects include Tokyo Cowboy (a feature comedy/drama starring Arata Iura and Jun Kunimura), a new Hulu docuseries (coming April 2023), and a Mandarin-language animated feature film adaptation of Fuji TV’s Chibi Maruko-Chan (with a main theme by Hisaishi). Chad got his start in film music working as an assistant orchestrator for Conrad Pope on scores by Howard Shore (The Hobbit trilogy) and Alexandre Desplat (Godzilla and The Secret Life of Pets franchise). He is a graduate of Harvard and Juilliard and is a current delegate for the US-Japan Leadership Program (USJLP).

Violet Feng is an Emmy-winning independent documentarian and a 2018 Sundance Creative Producing Fellow. She is the director and producer of the Oscar Shortlisted doc Hidden Letters which was also shortlisted for the IDA Awards, nominated for the Cinema Eyes Honors, and has won several festival awards internationally. Feng also directed and produced the PBS/CPB special program Harbor from the Holocaust, which premiered in September 2020 with music performed by Yo-Yo Ma. In addition, she produced Dear Mother, I Meant to Write About Death, Singing in the Wilderness, Confucian Dream, Maineland, and Please Remember Me, which have won numerous awards including the Doc Impact Hi5, Special Jury Awards at SXSW, and awards from the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival. Feng started her career as a co-producer on the 2007 Emmy-winning documentary Nanking. She is also the consulting programmer for the Shanghai International Film Festival.

*** IMPORTANT – PLEASE READ ***

FREE for current SCL members (click HERE to check membership status).

To access FREE SCL Member Ticket, Enter First & Last Name (no space) and APPLY

Attendees will be emailed a zoom link upon registration.

The SCL Member Code of Conduct applies to online events.

---