Christine Choy, a trailblazing Asian American filmmaker known for the groundbreaking film Who Killed Vincent Chin?, has died.
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According to AsAmNews, Choy died on Sunday while in hospice care in New York City. The cause of death has not been revealed. The filmmaker was 73.
Choy was one of the first Asian American women nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for her 1987 film Who Killed Vincent Chin?, which she co-directed with Renee Tajima-Peña.
Born in Shanghai to a Korean father and Chinese mother, Choy moved to New York City at 14. There, she became active in the Black Panther Party and local activism. While at Manhattanville College, she joined Newsreel (later Third World Newsreel), a filmmaker collective documenting key social movements of the late 1960s.
Her other documentaries covered the 1971 Attica prison uprising (Teach Our Children), inhumane conditions in women’s prisons (Inside Women Inside), and activism in 1970s New York Chinatown (From Spikes to Spindles), among other social issues.
Choy is best known for the award-winning Who Killed Vincent Chin?. The film tells the story of the murder of Chinese American autoworker Vincent Chin. It was one of the first documentaries to explore the impacts of anti-Asian racism and hate crimes in the United States. Who Killed Vincent Chin? was also added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2021 for its “cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage.”
Christine Choy was Profiled in ‘The Exiles’
Meanwhile, Choy’s life is partially documented in The Exiles. The film, directed by two of her NYU students, won the 2022 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. In the film, Choy recounts attending the Sundance Film Festival for Who Killed Vincent Chin? and confronting the festival’s founder, Robert Redford, about its lack of diversity.
“This is not White on white … White people on white snow,” Choy recalled saying.
The following year, Choy was invited to join the Sundance jury.