Jessica Yu

Jessica Yu (born 1966 (age 31)) is an American film director, writer, producer, and editor.

She has directed documentary films, dramatic films, and television shows.

Yu graduated from Yale University in 1987 summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a bachelor's degree in English.

After graduation, Yu thought of pursuing law school like her peers.

However, her father discouraged her from doing so.

She discovered film production while searching for a job that allowed flexible hours to allow her to compete in fencing.

She started as a production assistant in 1989 on a few commercials, where she got to arrange frozen Noodles on forks and re-park cars.

When she started working in documentary, she became further intrigued by the process.

Yu refused to attend film school and gained her film education on the job.

She focuses on making documentaries but says that one day she'd love to make a fully animated comedy feature.

The opportunity to make film is a random occurrence for Yu.

Her documentary films present worldwide issues that people face every day and allow the subjects to speak for themselves as much as possible.

She is adamant that story should come before politics.

Her films intend to inform the general public to incite people to become active in everyday issues such as water conservation and regulation.

When not making documentaries and feature films, Yu spends time directing television shows.

Yu began her career in 1993 with her short Sour Death Balls, a silent black-and-white montage of assorted subjects’ reactions to blindingly bitter candy, which was shot on an old school Bell & Howell wind-up camera.

She got her inspirations from daily interactions in her life, i.e. when a child offered local people sour candy.

Yu sent the short film to film festivals, and it became her first feature at the Telluride Film Festival in 1993.

Yu made her first documentary, Men of Reenaction (1994), which explores the extremes of people searching for authenticity through Civil War reenacting.

Her most famous work was her Academy Award-winning Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien.

The documentary short features Berkeley writer Mark O'Brien, a disabled poet with an iron lung.

His editor at the Pacific News Service, Sandy Close, introduced the pair and suggested that a film be made.

Yu won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1996 for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien (1996).

It debuted at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and won several honors, including the International Documentary Association Achievement Award for Best Documentary, before the Academy Awards.

In the 2000s, Yu's chance to work in episodic TV came when she received an invitation to apprentice at John Wells Productions as the first participant of their director diversity program.

Shadowing directors, Yu sensed she was a guinea pig.

“If you screw this up,” she told herself, “they’ll never let another woman of color from documentaries do this again.” While working for Wells’ production company, she began directing in television for shows like Grey's Anatomy and The West Wing. On her first directorial assignment, an episode of The West Wing, Yu was heartened that Wells encouraged her stylistic input.

“He made a point of saying, ‘You should bring your own ideas to the table,’ rather than just follow prescribed formula.” So she decided to open with a series of mood-establishing low, wide-angle shots to signal the calm before the gathering storm.

She directed a sport comedy film, Ping Pong Playa (2007), that explored Asian family culture through a Chinese ping pong playing son that is trying to prove himself to his family.

Her producer friends Joan Huang and Jeff Guo approached her with the idea of working on a comedy together.

Yu's film Last Call at the Oasis (2012) is based upon Alex Prud'homme's Ripple Effect.

Her more recent films have been: Misconception (2014), ForEveryone.Net (2016), a documentary film about the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and a Netflix comedy Maria Bamford: Old Baby (2017).

In 2019, Yu was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Direction for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special" for the Fosse/Verdon episode "Glory".

Yu grew up in Los Altos Hills, California.

Her father, Dr. Kou-ping Yu, an oncologist, was born in Shanghai.

Her mother, Connie Young Yu, writer and historian, is a third-generation Californian.

Yu graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto.

She was a reporter for the school newspaper, The Oracle.

She went on to attend Yale University, where she was a two-time NCAA All-American and three-time All-Ivy in fencing.

As a world-class foilist, she was a member of the Junior World Team and the United States national team at the World Championships and World University Games.