Christine Choy
2021Namibia: Independence Now!
Pearl Bowser, Christine Choy
A revolutionary political moment is captured firsthand by two independent women filmmakers shooting inside refugee settlements in Zambia and Angola in 1985. Depicting the significant role of women in this struggle for independence, this film explores the lives of exiled women workers attempting to free their country from illegal exploitation.
Namibia: Independence Now!
The Best Hotel on Skid Row
Renee Tajima-Peña, Christine Choy
Charles Bukowski
America Undercover goes to the Madison Hotel in the skid-row section of downtown Los Angeles and talks to some of the desperate people living there. It talks to a prostitute and heroin addict named Becky, a drug dealer and traveler names John, and an heavy drinking alcoholic named Jack Woodrow Wilson.
The Best Hotel on Skid Row
Who Killed Vincent Chin?
Christine Choy
Lily Chin, Ronald Ebens
This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system. Restored by the Academy Film Archive and The Film Foundation, in association with the Museum of Chinese in America. Restoration funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation, with additional support provided by Todd Phillips.
Who Killed Vincent Chin?
In The Name of the Emperor
Christine Choy, Nancy Tong
A matter-of-fact documentary of the massacre of over 300,000 Chinese civilians by the Japanese in the so-called 'Rape of Nanjing' in 1937. In the name of the Japanese emperor Hirohito, the desperate soldiers, enraged by intense Chinese resistance, stormed the then capitol of China and over a six week period systematically raped, tortured, and killed many of the inhabitants of that city. This is a matter-of-fact although polemical documentary, with many of the horrifyingly intense images taken from home movies made by an American missionary who was there.
In The Name of the Emperor
Mississippi Triangle
Allan Siegel, Christine Choy
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and Whites live in a complex world of cotton, work, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese community is framed against the harsh realities of civil , religion, politics, and class in the South. Rare historical footage and interviews of Delta residents are combined to create this unprecedented document of inter-ethnic relations in the American South.
Mississippi Triangle
Bittersweet Survival
Christine Choy, J.T. Takagi
This documentary examines the re-settlement of South-East Asian refugees in the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. The film begins with a montage of riveting footage depicting the devastating effects of the war. It then unveils the mixed reception given Vietnamese refugees in the United States, from battles with local fishermen in Monterey, California, to conflicts in Philadelphia where their arrival in the city's poorest neighborhoods kindled resentment in the Black community. The film also explores their struggle to cope with life in the U.S. and maintain their identity.
Bittersweet Survival
Homes Apart: Korea
Christine Choy, J.T. Takagi
They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.
Homes Apart: Korea
Inside Women Inside
Christine Choy, Cynthia Maurizio
This film exposes the daily humiliation regularly faced by women in U.S. prisons using firsthand accounts of inmates at the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women and the Correctional Institute for Women at Riker's Island, New York.
Inside Women Inside
Sparrow Village
Christine Choy
In a rural village of southwestern China a bevy of young girls yearn for an education. Their parents are poor and illiterate. It is difficult for them to scrape together the money to send their daughters to school in another village. The money for tuition, books, and room and board away from home is often more than parents can spare.We follow several as they make the weekly three-hour trek to the local school. Among the teachers there is only one female who is an inspiration to them all. She encourages them in their studies and challenges them to progress. But we also witness the pain of one family who simply cannot pay for their daughter's schooling. She must drop out and put off her dreams for a while. The son who is less talented is favored for schooling.Beautifully photographed in the lush mountain greenery, these fresh faced girls hold onto their hopes of becoming teachers and doctors against great odds.
Sparrow Village
