Christine Choy, indie filmmaker who led seminal documentary on the killing of Vincent Chin, dies

Christine Choy, a trailblazer for Asian Americans in independent film and whose documentary on the fatal beating of Vincent Chin was nominated for an Academy Award, has died. She was 73.

Choy died Sunday, according to a statement from JT Takagi, executive director of Third World Newsreel, a filmmaking collective Choy helped establish in the 1970s. No cause of death was given.

“She was a prolific filmmaker who made significant films that helped form our Asian American and American film history,” Takagi said on the organization’s website. 

Chin, a Chinese American who grew up in Detroit, was celebrating his bachelor party in 1982 when two white auto workers attacked him. At that time, Japanese auto companies were being blamed for job losses in the U.S. auto manufacturing industry. The attackers were motivated by their assumption that Chin was Japanese. His death and the lack of prison time for the two assailants is considered a galvanizing moment for Asian Americans fighting anti-Asian hate.

Tajima-Peña recalls bonding with Choy and other crew during freezing Detroit winter nights while waiting for witnesses in Chin’s death and evenings spent with Chin’s mother’s over home-cooked meals.

“We were in constant motion during the production with Chris always the picture of cool — sunglasses, stylishly slim, cigarette in hand. And yes she was brash and outspoken — her cigarettes may have had filters but her language didn’t,” Tajima-Peña said in an email to The Associated Press on Friday. “But, her audaciousness was all a part of the package.”

Their production was lauded for bringing more attention to Chin’s slaying and went on to earn an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature in 1989. In 2021, it was chosen for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

Choy was a full-time professor at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts up until her death. She was praised as someone who enjoyed mentoring young auteurs and students at NYU and Third World Newsreel. 

In a statement, Dean Rubén Polendo called her “a triumphant force in documentary filmmaking whose works penetrated America’s social conscience.”

“Christine’s loss is felt deeply across the Tisch community, where her unparalleled legacy survives through her pioneering work as an artist and educator,” Polendo said.

Born in China, Choy grew up with a Korean father and a Chinese mother. She immigrated to New York City as a teen. Being there in the 1960s, Choy learned about the Civil Rights Movement up-close. That would shape her passion for social justice, according to her NYU faculty biography.

She moved to Los Angeles and earned a directing certificate from the American Film Institute. But she eventually moved back to New York and, in 1972, helped create Third World Newsreel. The group’s mission was to advance films about social justice and marginalized communities, particularly people of color. Choy’s early documentaries included subjects such as New York City’s Chinatown and race relations in the Mississippi Delta.

Choy received several awards and fellowships over the years, including Guggenheim and Rockefeller fellowships. She also taught at other universities, including Yale, Cornell and City University in Hong Kong.