A Screening and Talk
With Christine Choy and Richard Fung
Thursday, June 6, 2013
6:30 – 9:30 pm, doors open 6:00 pm
TPW R&D, 1256 Dundas St. W.
PWYC
Initiated as a promo clip to raise funds for a legal case, the Academy Award nominated documentary film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (Christine Choy & Renee Tajima-Peña) became a feature-length, complex and confounding analysis of the murder of Chinese-American engineer Vincent Chin, who was beaten to death by two Detroit auto workers in 1982. The faltering of the American auto industry, recognized as being due to competition from Japan, produced the conditions for what was alleged to be a racially motivated crime. Weaving together parallel accounts of the incident, Choy and Tajima-Peña take a Rashomon-style approach to present competing truth claims in a pivotal moment when American race and class politics clashed. This stirred the imaginary of a progressive Asian-American politics, putting to question the costs, ethics and tactics that lead to the coalescence of the Asian-American movement and civil rights struggles in the United States.
Gendai invites you to this first “module” in the Model Minority series that takes an intersectional approach to analyze the practices that construct hierarchies, conflict and power struggles in the terrain of multiculturalism and cultural diversity in North America. Who Killed Vincent Chin? will be introduced by Toronto based artist and writer Richard Fung, followed by a talk by one of the directors, New York based filmmaker Christine Choy. With this screening, Gendai initiates a discussion of the Model Minority by introducing the little known legacies, actors and events of Asian diasporic politics and culture—the unexpected figures and categorical fictions that drive the construction of race and power, past and present. What are the resonances of the Vincent Chin case today for race and class politics? Practices of image production and political filmmaking guide our discussions—the stories and struggles we will encounter help us grapple with and shape a model minority analysis to think and work from.
Join us for popcorn and refreshments at this special screening event.
Christine Choy is a New York based filmmaker. She has produced and directed over seventy works and received over sixty international awards including the John Simon Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Asian Cultural Council fellowships, as well as an Academy Award nomination for the documentary film, Who Killed Vincent Chin?. Christine was a founding member of Third World Newsreel, teaches at NYU, Yale, Cornell, and SUNY Buffalo and was a visiting scholar at Evergreen State College, Oslo and Volda Film Institute in Norway.
Richard Fung is a Toronto based video artist and writer, and associate professor at OCAD University. His award winning videos have been widely exhibited and collected, and his essays have been published in numerous journals and anthologies. He is the co-author with Monika Kin Gagnon of 13: Conversations on Art and Cultural Race Politics and his most recent production is Dal Puri Diaspora (2013). He is a recipient of the Bell Canada Award and the Toronto Arts Award for media art.