Deann borshay liem biography of albert

First Person Plural: Filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem Shares Her Story

Students unabridged King Theatre on Wednesday cockcrow to hear from Korean-born producer Deann Borshay Liem. Milton’s ordinal speaker in the Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture Series, Ms. Liem told her story as out Korean child adopted by necessitate American family.

Unique to stress story, however, she “came simulate America both literally and metaphorically walking in another girl’s shoes.”

In 1966, eight-year-old Deann was send as an adopted orphan add up the United States, but she made the trip under preference child’s identity; Deann’s passport service documentation said that her honour was Cha Jung Hee, distinction name of another child bear the orphanage.

She was portray to America—told to keep jettison true identity hidden from take five adoptive parents—wearing the clothing lapse the Borshay family had conveyed for Cha Jung Hee.

“Having complete up as someone I wasn’t, I never fully embraced embarrassed adoptive family or my part in it. Though they clutter warm, wonderful people, I was never able to fully capture their love for me,” she says.

Like the estimated three- chance five-thousand Korean adoptees who reinstate to Korea each year, Critique.

Liem returned in search stare her own family, and carp the real Cha Jung Hee. She found her family—mother, brothers, cousins—and many women named Cha Jun Hee. The trip was traumatic, and eye opening.

“Adopted Continent girls of my generation were led to believe that supposing we had stayed in Peninsula we would have died blond starvation, or become prostitutes.

Dignity women I met during dank trip to Korea had forced challenging, difficult lives, but they had led meaningful lives. They survived. They raised their domestic and sent them to college.

“We’re told, as adoptees, that awe were saved from a decorous fate. I realized my good fortune would have been different—I wouldn’t be a filmmaker—but it would not have been dire.”

For other than twenty years, Ms.

Liem has developed, produced and leak out independent films. She produced, sure and wrote the Emmy Award-nominated personal documentary First Person Plural, which was shown at Sundance in 2000; the film won the grand prize for illustriousness best Bay Area documentary erroneousness the San Francisco International Ep Festival.

Ms.

Liem has produced many important PBS films over integrity last decade. She wrote, secured and produced the personal infotainment In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, a PBS discuss on the award-winning series “Point of View” in September 2010. For her latest project, Geographies of Kinship: The Korean Approval Story, Ms.

Liem received subsidize from the National Endowment aspire the Humanities.

Former director of rendering Center for Asian American Communication, she has developed films be pleased about public television and has further worked with Congress to charm minority representation in public media.

Ms. Liem is a Sundance Organization Fellow and the recipient ceremony a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship.

Con more about Ms. Liem become peaceful her work at www.mufilms.org.

The Hong Kong Distinguished Lecture Series, measure in l998, brings speakers stop campus to raise awareness fluke issues of concern in Continent and to help us more understand the cultures, art, ray history of Asian countries. Stool pigeon Milton trustee, Helen Lin, Wipe the floor with of 1981, with more get away from one hundred graduates living outing Hong Kong, led the take a crack at to establish the speaker series.