One of our favorite AoBFF alumni, the 4" tall Gran'pa, is getting ready to make his debut on HBO Latino. We wanted to know more about the artist who helped bring him to life so we sat down with artist Chang Kim to learn how it all came about.

Congratulations... the work you did director William D. Caballero is going to be air on HBO Latino on this September!
Chang: Yes! The project Gran'pa Knows Best started as a web-series. However, HBO saw the project within a month of its online launch, and were super-interested in it. To make a long story short, it is going to air on 16th of this September and I’m so excited about it. It’ll be on HBO Now, as well.

How did your collaboration with William begin?
Chang: Well, actually I met him on Mandy. I was looking for talented directors working in animation, and those in search of someone who could do 3D modeling. It was the right timing for both of us. Soon after I saw his previous works like Seed Story (which won the Vanguard Award at the 2013 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival), I just felt that I met the right person for my next project. Together, we finally worked on the short film  'How You Doin’ Boy? Voicemails From Gran’pa’, which won the Best Animation Award at the 2014 AoBFF. That was just beginning and now our Gran’pa is going to be air on HBO Latino.

How did you became a 3D modeler and what is your background ?
My background is painting. I started drawing since when I was very young and I also really liked sculpting as well, I remember that one time wen I was very little, I sculpted a snow man shaped like Donald Duck with my mother’s kitchen knife and everybody in my neighborhood loved it. I believe that experience make me to think about entertaining people with my skills.

After I studied painting in my college I was getting more and more intension to be working in digital sculpting and visual art, so I came to New York to study more and finally I found digital sculpting and 3D modeling was the best fit to me. 

What other projects have worked on?
One of the most successful work I’ve done before the Gran’Pa series is the short animated film 'Tumbleweed Tango’ at Humble in 2012. It’s a story about two balloon dogs who dance a dangerous tango through a cactus-filled desert.

Want to work with Chang? Get in touch with him at [email protected]

First, there was the short film "How You Doin' Boy? Voicemails from Gran'pa" which had its NYC Premiere at the 2014 Art of Brooklyn Film Festival. (And took home the Best Animation award to boot.) 

But Gran'pa was too big for just one film, so he became a web series. 

Now, the world's tiniest abuelo will be doling out advice for two seasons on HBO Latino via a “first of its kind” acquisition deal for interstitial programming between creator William D. Caballero and HBO.

Video courtesy of TODAY.

UCB Comedy came to Brooklyn to shoot 'Underwear Cook-off Challenge' at Bay Ridge baked-goods mecca Robicelli's — and owners Matt and Allison even compete to make the most delicious drawers. Because all undies are edible if you know how to cook 'em.

'The Art Of Brooklyn Film Festival’s award ceremony for 2015’s winners had barely finished when I was lucky enough to hustle the executive producer Joseph Shahadi and panelist/filmmaker Clare Kent into the suddenly empty and echoey cinema for a good old summarizing chin-wag. Clare had compiled some diversity stats on the content this year that turned out to be massively thought-provoking and Joseph obviously had plenty to say on the subject of his fifth film festival.

The awards had been dished, the contributors thanked and the projection screen rolled up, and it was time to reflect. Here are the passionate duo’s thoughts on the borough they’ve invested so much love and care into.'

Read the full interview at Girls On Film.

It's the largest indoor theater in Brooklyn, with 3,000 seats. And in its heyday was one of the most beautiful movie palaces in the city, if not the world. After closing for good in 1977, you'd be hard pressed to find a New Yorker who thought the Kings would ever reopen. Things like that just don't happen very often, especially in Flatbush. The Kings had become a grand memory, the gilded star of stories Brooklynites told of a theater that was so gorgeous it made your head spin.

Now, it's back. Defying all the odds, the Kings Theatre has returned to her former glory thanks to a $95 million renovation. Gothamist has the full story along with a photo gallery shot by Clay Williams. Gaze upon it in awe and wonder!

In the first of a series of interviews we are doing with fascinating Brooklynites, Art of Brooklyn met with folklorist Joseph Sciorra in his Williamsburg apartment, where he told us about Italian American folk life, in the borough and beyond. 

Sciorra has researched and written about religious festivals, yard shrines—even the famous Christmas lights that festoon Dyker Heights during the holidays. But he spent the most time describing nativity scenes called presepi, which integrate the figures of the Holy Family into complex assemblages that can include “anachronistic figurines, objects from nature, architectural items hand-crafted from recycled milk cartons and Popsicle sticks, and multi-colored blinking electric lights.” 

Brooklyn-born Dr. Sciorra creates a presepio every year at Christmas around a different theme (see the slideshow below). This year he transformed a corner of his apartment kitchen into the time-warped basement (ca. 1973) of an imaginary Uncle. Decorated with props gathered all year long —an avocado green rotary phone, 70s Christmas cards, wood paneling, vintage magazines, etc— and a detailed nativity nestled inside a hollowed out tube television, it is an incongruous slice of a past-within-a past at the edge of the sunny kitchen he shares with his wife and children.

SLIDESHOW: Presepi by Joseph Sciorra

Joseph Sciorra is the Director for Academic and Cultural Programs at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, Queens College (City University of New York).  

You can preorder his upcoming book, Built with Faith: Italian American Imagination and Catholic Material Culture in New York City on Amazon.