Christine Choy

Christine Choy (born 1952) is a Chinese-American filmmaker.

In 1965, Choy was given a scholarship to attend Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart in New York, where she studied architecture.

While attending, she made friends with a group of hippies that were a part of Newsreel.

At Newsreel, Choy worked as an editor and animation director for some amount of time.

Soon thereafter, Choy earned a Directing Certificate at the American Film Institute.

Choy has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Memorial Fellowship, and an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship.

During her tenure, Choy directed documentary films on the 1971 Attica prison uprising, the life of women in United States prisons, and the history of social activism in New York City's chinatown, as well as documentaries on the division of the Korean peninsula and Namibia's struggle for independence from South Africa, among others.

In 1972, Choy co-founded Third World Newsreel together with fellow filmmaker Susan Robeson.

In 1974, Choy directed her first feature-length documentary, Teach Our Children.

Because Choy was able to relate to the poverty and the migration issues that people around her faced, she was inspired to make a second documentary, fusing the issues she faced in China and South Korea with the struggles she faced in the United States.

She finished the film—From Spikes to Spindles—in 1976.

Its focus was Chinese migration and Chinese citizens' struggle for equal treatment in America.

Choy was one of the first major female Chinese-American filmmakers.

She is frequently painted as a controversial figure.

She is considered a political filmmaker and an activist.

She is known for co-directing Who Killed Vincent Chin?, a 1988 film based on the murder of Vincent Jen Chin, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.

She co-founded Third World Newsreel, a film company focusing on people of color and social justice issues.

As a documentary filmmaker, she has produced and directed more than eighty films.

She is a professor at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Choy was born in Shanghai in the People's Republic of China as Chai Ming Huei to a Korean father and a Chinese mother.

Shortly after Choy's birth, her father abandoned the family to return to South Korea.

As a result, Choy was raised largely by her mother.

Growing up, her family struggled greatly financially.

Following the Cultural Revolution, the family fled mainland China via Hong Kong.

They moved to South Korea, where Choy was reunited with her father.

During this time, Choy developed a strong appreciation for American films released in South Korea.

Although she enjoyed the films, Choy became attuned to the prevalence of casual discrimination towards Asian people in American media.

Choy moved to New York City at the age of fourteen.

"I was a volunteer for WBAI in high school," Choy recounts.

"One of my duties was covering the Panther Twenty-One trial at the Tombs."

During the trial, she earned the trust of the Panthers and soon afterward, began doing errands for the New York City chapter.

"I was a Panther Youth," Choy recalls.

"I did the running around for the big shots."

One of Choy's most acclaimed films, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988), was co-directed with Renee Tajima.

The film tells the story of Vincent Jen Chin, a Chinese-American man who was beaten to death with a baseball bat by Ron Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz, who held Chin defenseless.

Neither of the White men served a single day in prison.

They were each sentenced to 3 years probation and a $3,000 fine.

Her documentary film Who Killed Vincent Chin? received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1989.

In 2021, the film was registered in the National Film Registry.

Using her camera to shed light on hidden social histories and injustices, Choy has developed a reputation for fearless filmmaking and uncompromising vision in her push to change and deepen audiences' understanding of the world.