Grace Lee | |
|---|---|
 Lee in 2015 | |
| Born | 1968/1969(age 53–54) [1] Columbia, Missouri, U.S. |
| Occupation | Film director, producer |
| Notable work | The Grace Lee Project |
| Website | gracelee |
Grace Lee is an American director and producer. She is known for both her documentaries and narrative films, which often mix in elements of documentaries.
Lee is of Korean heritage and from Columbia, Missouri. [2] She originally wanted to be a journalist, but after interviewing sex workers in South Korea, she realized that she could tell better stories through film. Back in the United States, she enrolled in UCLA. She now lives in Los Angeles, California. [3]
Her first short, Girl Meets Boy was, according to Lee, a two-minute "response to those who have questioned my ability to speak loudly and in English". [4] In 2000, she won a UCLA Spotlight Award for her short film The Ride Home. [5] Barrier Device , her master's thesis, stars Sandra Oh and won a silver medal at the 29th Student Academy Awards. In 2002, she was profiled in Filmmaker as one of the New Faces of Independent Film. [4] Her 2004 short film Best of the Wurst was nominated for the Berlin International Film Festival's Berlin Today Award [6] and is featured in the Deutsches Currywurst Museum. [7] Following this, she filmed The Grace Lee Project , a 2005 documentary about Asian-American women who share her name. [3] With In-Ah Lee, she formed LeeLee Films in 2006. [8]
American Zombie , her feature narrative film directorial debut, was released in 2007. A mockumentary about zombie civil rights in Los Angeles, it satirized her earlier experience with documentary films. [9] Janeane from Des Moines , released in 2012, is about a conservative housewife who attends the 2012 Republican Party primary in Iowa. The film mixes staged scenes and real interviews with Republican politicians, conducted in character without the knowledge of the media or politicians. ABC World News Tonight picked up the story, not realizing that Janeane is a fictional character. [10] American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs is a 2013 documentary about Grace Lee Boggs, an activist that Lee met while filming The Grace Lee Project. [11] Her next documentary, Makers: Women in Politics , aired on PBS in September 2014 as part of a series based on Makers: Women Who Make America . [12] In December 2015, Off the Menu: Asian America , a documentary about Asian food, aired on PBS. [13]
In November 2015, she received funding from the Sundance Institute as a part of the Women at Sundance Fellows program. [14]
| Title | Year | Director | Producer | Writer | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Girl Meets Boy | 2000 | Yes | No | Yes | Short |
| The Ride Home | 2000 | Yes | No | Yes | Short |
| Barrier Device | 2002 | Yes | No | Yes | Short |
| Best of the Wurst | 2004 | Yes | No | No | Short, documentary |
| The Grace Lee Project | 2005 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Documentary |
| American Zombie | 2007 | Yes | No | Yes | Also co-stars as a fictionalized version herself |
| Janeane from Des Moines | 2012 | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs | 2013 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Documentary |
| Makers: Women in Politics | 2014 | Yes | Yes | No | Documentary |
| Off the Menu: Asian America | 2015 | Yes | No | No | Documentary |
Heather Rae is an American film and television producer and director. She has worked on documentary and narrative film projects, and is best known for Frozen River, Trudell, and Tallulah.
Ellen Kuras is an American cinematographer whose body of work includes narrative and documentary films, music videos and commercials in both the studio and independent worlds. One of few female members of the American Society of Cinematographers, she is a pioneer best known for her work in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004). She has collaborated with directors such as Michel Gondry, Spike Lee, Sam Mendes, Jim Jarmusch, Rebecca Miller, Martin Scorsese and more. She is the three-time winner of the Award for Excellence in Dramatic Cinematography at the Sundance Film Festival, for her films Personal Velocity: Three Portraits, Angela and Swoon, which was her first dramatic feature after getting her start in political documentaries.
Renee Tajima-Peña is an American filmmaker whose work focuses on immigrant communities, race, gender and social justice. Her directing and producing credits include the documentaries Who Killed Vincent Chin?, No Más Bebés, My America...or Honk if You Love Buddha, Calavera Highway, Skate Manzanar, Labor Women and the 5-part docuseries Asian Americans.
Doan Hoang or Đoan Hoàng is a Vietnamese-American documentary film director, producer, editor, and writer. She directed and produced the 2007 documentary Oh, Saigon about her family, after leaving Vietnam on the last civilian helicopter as Saigon fell. The documentary won several awards at film festivals and was broadcast on PBS from 2008 to 2012. Hoang was selected to be a delegate to Spain for the American Documentary Showcase.
Yvonne Welbon is an American independent film director, producer, and screenwriter based in Chicago. She is known for her films, Living with Pride:Ruth C. Ellis @ 100 (1999), Sisters in Cinema (2003), and Monique (1992).
The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) was founded in 1980. The San Francisco-based organization, formerly known as the National Asian American Telecommunications Association (NAATA), has grown into the largest organization dedicated to the advancement of Asian Americans in independent media, specifically the areas of television and filmmaking.
Grace Lee Boggs was an American author, social activist, philosopher, and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s. In the 1960s, she and James Boggs, her husband of some forty years, took their own political direction. By 1998, she had written four books, including an autobiography. In 2011, still active at the age of 95, she wrote a fifth book, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, with Scott Kurashige and published by the University of California Press. She is regarded as a key figure in the Asian American Movement.
American Zombie is a 2007 American mockumentary horror film directed by Grace Lee, written by Rebecca Sonnenshine and Lee, and starring Lee and John Solomon as documentary filmmakers who investigate a fictional subculture of real-life zombies living in Los Angeles.
Dawn Porter is an American documentary filmmaker and founder of production company Trilogy Films.
The Grace Lee Project is a 2005 American documentary film directed and co-written by Grace Lee. It is about Lee's attempt to define a common set of stereotypes associated with the name that she shares with the film's subjects.
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs is a 2013 American biographical documentary film directed by Grace Lee.
Janeane from Des Moines is a 2012 American political drama film directed by Grace Lee, written by Lee and Jane Edith Wilson, and starring Wilson as a conservative housewife who attends the 2012 Republican Party primary in Iowa. It mixes elements of mockumentary and real-life interviews with Republican politicians conducted in-character without their knowledge.
Thuc Doan Nguyen is a New Orleans-based writer and producer. She was born in Vietnam, was a child boat person, is a refugee and grew up in North Carolina and Southern Maryland. She is a double major from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Public Policy Analysis and Communication Studies and also holds a master's degree (MPA) obtained in Southern California. Nguyen is the founder of "The Bitch Pack", a group dedicated to promoting female-driven screenplays through Twitter and other social media sites. Nguyen is the winner of a 2020 Sundance Institute Inclusion Initiative Fellowship which enabled her to attend the Sundance Film Festival that year, the same year her screenplay "Scent of the Delta" was in Round 2 of the Development Labs (semi-finalist). She is also the founder of the original "#StartWith8Hollywood" which has opened doors for Women of Color creators. Nguyen is also the founder of the online portal Spooky Spaces.
Off the Menu: Asian America is a 2015 American documentary film by Grace Lee about Asian American culture, Asian cuisine, and how they relate to the culture of the United States. It premiered in March 2015 at CAAMFest and aired on PBS in December 2015.
Amanda Micheli is an American director and the founder of Runaway Films. In June 2022 she signed with The United Talent Agency.
Margaret Betts is an American filmmaker. Her debut feature Novitiate was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival and received a Jury Award for her direction.
Kimberly Reed is an American film director and producer who is best known for her documentaries Prodigal Sons and Dark Money which premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. In 2007, Filmmaker magazine named her one of the "25 New Faces of Independent Film."
Flavia Fontes was a filmmaker and film editor based in New York.
Julia Reichert is an American Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker and feminist.
Deborah Lum is an American documentary filmmaker based in San Francisco. Her projects frequently explore subject matters within the Asian and Asian American community.