About the Filmmakers
Christine Choy, Director
Christine Choy, an Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker, is an educator, a creative artist, and a pioneering Asian-American filmmaker who has lent her expertise to producing, directing, and photographing works in many forms.
Choy was trained as an architect, receiving her Master of Science Degree from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University. She earned a Directing Certificate from the American Film Institute. Choy is a full professor at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She served as chair of the Graduate Film/TV Program from 1994 to 1997, and again from 2002 to 2005. She has taught at Yale and Cornell Universities as well as SUNY Buffalo. She was a visiting scholar at Evergreen State College, Oslo and Volda film Institute, Norway.
Choy has made more than 75 films, and received more than 60 international awards, including a 1989 Oscar nomination for Best Documentary, for Who Killed Vincent Chin. She received the Best Cinematography award from the Sundance International Film Festival and has been the recipient of numerous fellowships including John Simon Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and the Asian Cultural Council. Her works have been featured at the Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hong Kong, Pusan international festivals as well as the Asian American International Festival in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York.
Choy’s works have been broadcast on HBO, PBS, Sundance Channel, Lifetime, NHK, and other television channels. She is the founding director of the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong; a member of Project Vetting committee of the Film Development Fund, Hong Kong; and an International Trustee Member of the Asia Society from 1995 to 2002. She is currently a member of the Fulbright committee.
Ku-Ling Siegel, Director
Ku-Ling Siegel has been inspiring moviegoers for more than six years through her exceptional cinematography. She has worked primarily in documentaries on such topics as Ashtanga yoga, indigenous peoples, Roma music, urban life in Shanghai, and more. In addition to her work as a cinematographer, she has directed several short-length film projects. Hyam Plutzik: American Poet is her fourth directing effort. She earned a BFA in Photography from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and an MFA in cinematography from the American Film Institute.
Edward Moran, Literary Researcher
Edward Moran, an author and historian who specializes in literary biography, has contributed many articles to reference works. In the 1990s, he served as associate editor of H. W. Wilson’s World Authors series, a comprehensive update of the Twentieth Century Authors project originally edited by Stanley Kunitz in the 1930s. Edward also co-authored, with Patrick Coyne, a bio-bibliography of American writer Clarence S. Day., Jr., published by Edwin Mellen Press in 2003 as part of its Studies in American Literature Series, and is working on a similar volume about Alice Duer Miller. Prior to these publications, Edward had been an associate editor of the Random House Dictionary of the English Language. He also has written script, song lyric, and voiceover material for films by Yongman Kim, Marilyn Perez, and Jin Yan, and is the author of several choral anthems and texts.
Josh Cramer, Editor
Josh Cramer is a freelance film and video editor based in New York City. Recent work includes the 2006 horror film Head Trauma directed by Lance Weiler, and an episode of the new PBS series AIR, “Shooting the War” directed by Ku-Ling Siegel, about two photojournalists covering the war in Iraq. Other notable projects Cramer has cut include the upcoming ITVS/PBS documentary La Lupe: Queen of Latin Soul about the outrageous Cuban singer, and Beneath the Borqa in Afghanistan. He has also edited music videos for indie bands such as Zero 7, Calla, and Ambulance LTD and regularly cuts commercials for Ogilvy & Mather New York.