Edrian Melchor F. Pangilinan was born in Mandaluyong City, Philippines in 1992. He currently lives in San Diego, CA where his entire family immigrated in 2001. Growing up with a strong liking for the arts, his training included dance, music, voice and art. He discovered his passion for photography in 7th grade when MySpace was taking off and expressing oneself through photo-blogging was starting off. In 2008, Edrian became inspired by the explosion of fashion on YouTube and dedicated the next two summers learning the art of video editing.
He graduated from San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts in 2011 where he discovered his potential for developing creative expression through dance and video. Edrian has performed and showcased choreographic works for numerous companies/institutions including Visionary Dance Theatre, San Diego Dance Theater, San Diego State University and most recently Samahan Philippine Dance Company to name a few.
On his journey to cultivating his artistic voice, he realized in addition to movement, the realm of television and film was something he really wanted to pursue seriously. His first professional film captured the transformation of incoming college students in Grossmont College’s “EOPS: Summer Institute Program 2015”. In 2016, his short film, “Lei é Bella” was featured in 40 North Dance Film Festival where his work was one of the top 36 films chosen amongst 106 submissions from 19 different countries. In 2017, he finally completed his LGBT short of three years, “Hey Man” a romantic comedy film about one’s discovery of self-love. While recently completing, “Flight” for the Campus Movie Festival in October. Another LGBT film greatly inspired by a deep-rooted place of loneliness and his yearning for companionship and connection (as of Nov 2019, the film on YouTube has been viewed over 96k+ times.)
Edrian graduated with a B.F.A in Dance with a minor in Television, Film and New Media from San Diego State University in December 2017. He feels very fortunate and thankful to have transitioned gracefully into the "real world" with a job that provides him the outlet to be happy and to be himself. Moving on forward into the new chapter of his life, he intends to use his craft to create work that challenges the status quo to initiate dialogues necessary for change.
Edrian since then has focused all of his newfound time + energy into becoming a content creator/producer/editor of his official YouTube Channel under “Edrian Pangilinan” So many doors has opened because of this former passion now rekindled. His great desires in pursuing this route is indeed to help create a better life for himself in terms of finding more representation and creating more opportunities for people that may relate to his journey/identity. Edrian simply just wants to prove/show everyone that he “can/is able” to achieve his dreams.
