Artist in Person

Christine Choy's Academy Award–nominated documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? unflinchingly questions the complicity of American society in a terrible crime, and the U.S. judicial system's shameful history of unfair treatment of people of color. In 1982, Detroit's economy was plummeting as demand for more fuel-efficient Japanese cars rose. Vincent Chin, a Chinese American man, was mistaken for Japanese and beaten to death by unemployed white auto workers. The killers were convicted but sentenced with only probation and a minimal fine by the predominantly white jurors. This lenient treatment outraged Asian American communities across the nation and galvanized their campaign for equality, ignited by Vincent's devastated mother, determined in her crusade to bring the unremorseful murderers to justice.