10 days after her death, the New York Times published Christine Choy's obituary on Wednesday. It was reported on Dec. 7 that the co-director behind the Oscar-nominated film Who Killed Vincent Chin? passed away due to cancer in a hospital in the Bronx. Her son, Fleeta Siege, confirmed the death. She was 76 years old.
The crime documentary, which was co-directed with Renee Tajima-Peña, was aired on various public television stations in 1987. It's based on the true story of a Chinese-American draftsman named Vincent Chin, who was murdered in June 1982 in Detroit by two white men, Ronald Ebens and his stepson, Michael Nitz. The two killers said the attack happened because they were drunk and had no racial motivations. But Ebens and Nitz assumed Chin was Japanese, cursing him while blaming him for the car-industry layoffs at that time.
Initially charged with second-degree murder, they pleaded "no contest" to a reduced charge of manslaughter and were sentenced to only three years of probation and fined $3,000, with no jail time. This ruling sparked outrage in the Asian-American community. Though a federal civil rights investigation followed, the outcome did not satisfy Chin's family.
President of the Museum of Chinese in America Nancy Yao, editor Holly Fisher, moderator Gina Telaroli, filmmaker Juanita Anderson, producer Renee Tajima-Pena and director Christine Choy attend the Q&A for "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" during the 59th New York Film Festival at Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center on October 02, 2021 in New York City.Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images
In Who Killed Vincent Chin?, Choy captured the Asian American community's anger in her documentary by showing interviews with Ebens and Chin's mother, Lily, who led this movement. The film received a Peabody Award, an Oscar-nomination for Best Documentary Feature in 1989 and serves as a classic for social justice and cinema studies courses in universities. In 2021, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."
Choy was born in Shanghai to a Chinese mother and a Korean father. Following the Cultural Revolution, she and her mom moved to Seoul to reunite with her father, who abandoned the family when Choy was a baby. In South Korea, that's when Choy found her love for film, but saw the racial discrimination toward Asians in Western media.
Her family then immigrated to New York City when she was 14, and after high school, she received a scholarship to study architecture at Manhattanville College of the Sacred Heart. She also received a graduate degree from Columbia University, but then moved to Los Angeles and earned a Director Certificate at the American Film Institute.
Throughout the 1970s, Choy co-founded multiple organizations and created many films that document the Asian-American and immigrant struggle. Because of this, she was painted as a "controversial" figure and political activist. Throughout her career, she produced and directed about 70 works and received over 60 international awards. Another popular documentary she co-directed was Sa-I-gu in 1993, which was about the effect of the 1992 riots on the Korean American community in Los Angeles, and directly dealt with the racial animosity towards Asian-Americans and Asian women.
After directing for decades in LA, she moved back to New York and became an adjunct professor at NYU's Tisch School of Arts, teaching the undergrad "Sight & Sound Documentary" production course for several years, as well as "Directing the Thesis."
Choy is survived by her three children and ex-husband Allan Siegel, also a prominent film producer, whom she married in 1979 but divorced.
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