In case you missed it: "Who Killed Vincent Chin" documentary online

In 1982, Vincent Chin was a 27-year-old starting his career as a draftsman in Detroit. On June 19, the Chinese-American immigrant went out with friends to celebrate his upcoming wedding. He died four days later after getting beaten with a baseball bat.

Yesterday, On the 40th anniversary of the slaying of Vincent Chin, POV presented a Special Encore Presentation of the gripping 1988 Academy Award® nominated film, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, by filmmakers Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Peña, on Monday, June 20.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of the racially motivated murder of Vincent Chin, a Chinese American, murdered by two white men, Ronald Ebens and Michael Nitz, in Detroit, Michigan on June 19, 1982. 

VIEW: The award-winning documentary, Who Killed Vincent Chin?, is still available online here.

The documentary, which originally aired on POV in July 1989, details the incident from initial eye-witness accounts, the ensuing murder trials to the lenient sentences the assailants received, and the repercussions for the families and community involved. Who Killed Vincent Chin? also chronicles how the case brought the disparate Asian American communities of Detroit together for the first time, and how they transformed themselves from a grassroots advocacy group into a national movement.

Their efforts helped bring public attention to the anti-Asian hate that led to Vincent Chin's murder, and encouraged Asian American groups across the country to fight for equality and justice. The U.S. Department of Justice brought federal civil rights charges against the killers, but they were ultimately acquitted on appeal, on grounds of pre-trial publicity and errors made with witnesses.

Chin, a Chinese American, was brutally beaten to death by two auto-workers with a baseball bat. They blamed the Japanese for out-of-work auto workers.

“I was vaguely aware of the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982. The next year, when I had the opportunity to meet Lily Chin, Vincent's mother in Detroit, Michigan, I knew this was a story that would make an impact. The project started as a short film to help the American Citizens for Justice (ACJ) raise the legal fee but with the support from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the film was expanded. It was a privilege to have taken part in the telling of this story nearly forty years ago and still see its relevance and importance today.” said documentary filmmaker Christine Choy.

“We knew who killed Vincent Chin, but the real question was why? Was it because of his race? For me it was a Rashomon-like enigma, trying to untangle the conflicting perspectives of the people who lived through the case. It also revealed the fractures in America itself, and ultimately, how people bridged those divides to fight for justice”  filmmaker Renee Tajima-Peña added.

Who Killed Vincent Chin? represents a critical turning point for Asian Americans with chilling relevance today. Anti-Asian sentiments that were further stoked by the COVID-19 pandemic have contributed to ongoing xenophobia, particularly against Chinese Americans, though they have affected the broader AAPI community. 

From March 19, 2020 to December 31, 2021, over ten thousand hate crime incidents were reported to Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit coalition tracking incidents of hate and discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States. Breaking news headlines about the 2021 Atlanta and Indianapolis shootings, and the recent murders in New York City of Christina Yuna Lee and Michelle Go as well, show that these hate crimes are disproportionately targeted at the elderly and Asian American women.

"Who Killed Vincent Chin? is a watershed moment in filmmaking craft as well as in building and unifying an intersectional political project for the Asian American community,” said executive director of American Documentary and executive producer of POV Erika Dilday, “Now more than ever we can feel its resonance, and I’m so happy to make this essential work newly accessible to millions of viewers on PBS.”

“The Library of Congress last year added the Who Killed Vincent Chin? documentary to the National Film Registry as one of the most important films in America,” Homberg noted. “We are very pleased that POV and PBS will be airing it to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Vincent Chin tragedy as our nation reaffirms its commitment to social justice for all Americans in the hope that a horrible act such as this will not be repeated.”

Who Killed Vincent Chin? is a co-presentation with Detroit Public Television (DPTV) and CAAM (Center for Asian American Media). Juanita Anderson (now on the board of American Documentary), Nancy Tong, Robert Larson are Executive Producers. Erika Dilday and Chris White are Executive Producers for American Documentary | POV.

“The brutal attack on Vincent Chin was a harrowing but significant incident in Detroit’s and America’s history,” said Rich Homberg, president and CEO of Detroit Public Television (DPTV). “This film is a moving testament to the loss of a young man’s life and to the people who stood up to protest this terrible injustice. It speaks volumes now more than ever about the wave of discrimination and violence against Asian Americans we continue to witness."

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, news and views from an AANHPI perspective, follow @DioknoEd on Twitter.

Documentary 'Asian Americans' wins Peabody Award

The 5-episode documentary Asian Americans  is a winner of the 2021 Peabody Awards, one of most prestigious honors in broadcast journalism.

“History and solidarity were always central concepts of the Asian Americans. We wanted to tell our own story within the context of race and justice in the U.S. Not the story of the Model Minority or the Perpetual Foreigner,” says series producer Renee Tajima-Peña. 

The critically acclaimed PBS documentary series Asian Americans was premiered a year ago on PBS. It is a production of WETA Washington, DC and the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) for PBS

“Being selected for a Peabody Award is a tremendous honor for CAAM and an acknowledgement of our four decades of work to bring Asian American stories to the broadest possible audience,” says CAAM Director of Programs Donald Young, who is also one of the executive producers of Asian Americans. 

“Respected for its integrity and revered for its standards of excellence, the Peabody Awards elevate stories that defend the public interest, encourage empathy with others, and teach us to expand our understanding of the world around us--all goals that we here at CAAM value,” he said.

The expansive five-part series chronicles over 250 years of Asian American experiences, which are deeply intertwined with United States history at large. 

“One thing that’s really important about the team that came together to make Asian Americans is that everyone has a long track record of being invested in the Asian American story. And we could locate our own family stories in the series. We figured out that Don’s family has been here the longest, back to the early Chinese migration in the 1800s,” says Tajima-Peña. “My grandparents came in the early 1900s—sugar cane workers, picture brides, all of whom had no pathway to citizenship for 50 years in America. Jean Tsien, Grace Lee and Geeta Gandbhir could trace their families’ arrivals to the 1965 immigration reforms. S. Leo Chiang was a parachute kid. Duc Nguyen, one of our archivists, arrived as a refugee from Vietnam.”

Asian Americans is one of the 30 works cited this year. The Peabody 30 are the best of over 1,300 entries submitted from television, podcasts/radio and the web in entertainment, news, documentary, arts, children’s/youth, public service and multimedia programming.

For the complete list of Peabody awardees, click here.

Asian Americans, narrated by Daniel Dae Kim and Tamlyn Tomita, chronicles the role of Asian Americans who did the most dangerous work of tunneling through the Sierras to build the Transcontinental Railroad, petitioned the Supreme Court to grant birthright citizenship, and challenged racial school segregation. And this history continued through the 20th century and into the 21st century. 

“Asian Americans continued to fight for justice in the courts, at the ballot box, in the streets, the fields, on campuses and in the culture. We’re fighting today. That’s the story we wanted to tell.”