Christine Choy

Directing

Christine Choy

Born 1949-09-17

Christine Choy (born 1952) is a Chinese-born American documentary filmmaker. Choy was one of the first major Chinese American woman film makers. One of Choy's most acclaimed films, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1988) is a multicultural film that was nominated for an Academy Award for best documentary.

Acting credits

Behind the camera

Homes Apart: Korea poster
NR

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

1991

Homes Apart: Korea poster
NR

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

1991

Bittersweet Survival: Southeast Asian Refugees in America poster
6.0

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: Southeast Asian Refugees in America

1982

Cinema Korea poster
NR

Academy Award-nominated director Christine Choy brings together interviews with actors and directors, archival footage of classic Korean films and accounts of defining historical events to give a fully rounded view of Korean film culture. Interviewees include Im Kwon-taek, Kim Ki-duk, Jang Dong-gun, Jeon Ji-hyun, Lee Byung-hun, Kwak Kyung-taek, Bang Eun-jin.

Cinema Korea

2009

Long Story Short poster
NR

Tells the story of Larry and Trudie Long, a popular Asian American nightclub act of the '40s and '50s, told through the eyes of their daughter, actress Jodi Long.

Long Story Short

2008

Long Story Short poster
NR

Tells the story of Larry and Trudie Long, a popular Asian American nightclub act of the '40s and '50s, told through the eyes of their daughter, actress Jodi Long.

Long Story Short

2008

Fei Tien: Goddess in Flight poster
NR

Based on the play, "Pigeons," by Ginny Lim, this film focuses on the meeting between an older immigrant and younger American-born woman living in Chinatown. The linkages in their pasts and possible futures unfold as their friendship grows.

Fei Tien: Goddess in Flight

1983

No artwork available
NR

Agent Yellow is a powerful indictment of the U.S. government’s systematic prejudice against Chinese-American scientists. The film focuses on the mistreatment of Chinese scientists who contributed significantly to American military research, specifically describing the tragic cases of Dr. Wen Ho Lee and Dr. Tsien Hsue-Shen.

Agent Yellow

2006

No artwork available
NR

Agent Yellow is a powerful indictment of the U.S. government’s systematic prejudice against Chinese-American scientists. The film focuses on the mistreatment of Chinese scientists who contributed significantly to American military research, specifically describing the tragic cases of Dr. Wen Ho Lee and Dr. Tsien Hsue-Shen.

Agent Yellow

2006

From Spikes to Spindles poster
NR

This raw, gutsy portrait of New York's Chinatown captures the early days of an emerging consciousness in the community. We see a Chinatown rarely depicted, a vibrant community whose young and old join forces to protest police brutality and hostile real estate developers. With bold strokes, it paints an overview of the community and its history, from the early laborers driving spikes into the transcontinental railroad to the garment workers of today.

From Spikes to Spindles

1976

Mississippi Triangle poster
7.0

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

1984

Mississippi Triangle poster
7.0

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

1984

The Best Hotel on Skid Row poster
7.3

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

1990

ReOrienting Africa: The Chinese in Ghana poster
10.0

A personal journey by Oscar nominee Christine Choy discovering the impact of Chinese Development in Africa.

ReOrienting Africa: The Chinese in Ghana

2016

Namibia: Independence Now! poster
8.0

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!

1985

No artwork available
NR

Peppered with clips from their seminal movies, Christine Choy draws fascinating insights from a who’s who of Asian directors making films in the 90s, including Wong Kar-Wai, Ang Lee, Zhang Yimou, Tony Chan, Wayne Wang and John Woo.

Electric Shadow

1998

To Love, Honor and Obey poster
NR

This film explores the social, psychological and cultural factors that contribute to violence against women regardless of ethnicity or economic background. Survivors, safe house administrators, counselors, police officers, and male abusers in counseling explore the many factors that contribute to the pervasiveness of this tragic aspect of American family life. Shot in battered women's shelters, urban and suburban neighborhoods, counseling centers, and even in a county jail where a woman has been incarcerated for the murder of her abusive husband

To Love, Honor and Obey

1980

In The Name of the Emperor poster
9.5

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

1998

In The Name of the Emperor poster
9.5

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

1998

Who Killed Vincent Chin? poster
6.8

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?

1987

Inside Women Inside poster
7.0

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

1978

Legal Smuggling with Christine Choy poster
NR

Academy Award–nominated filmmaker Christine Choy undergoes a wild adventure when she illegally—and accidentally—smuggles cigarettes across the Canadian border.

Legal Smuggling with Christine Choy

2016

Ha Ha Shanghai poster
7.0

In 1992 the filmmaker Christine Choy returned to Shanghai for the first time in over thirty years: to track down the title of her family’s house that her mother abandoned on leaving China for the U.S. in the early 1960’s and to locate an old schoolmate. This is a documentary journal recorded over a period of eight years.

Ha Ha Shanghai

2001

No artwork available
NR

Looking back over 20 years later at the Los Angeles riots in Koreatown as a result of the Rodney King verdict.

Rodney King: Koreatown Reacts