The Asian Diasporas Research Cluster at the Institute of Humanities Research is pleased to present the following film screening:

IN THE MATTER OF CHA JUNG HEE (2010)

preceded by a documentary short-in-progress on the Korean War, MEMORY OF THE FORGOTTEN WAR,

and followed by Q & A with filmmaker, Deann Borshay Liem

Poster available here.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2010, 5 p.m.

COMMUNICATIONS 150/STUDIO C

(building located between Baskin Engineering and College 9/10)

About the film: Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the US in 1966. Told to keep her true identity a secret from her new American family, this eight-year-old girl quickly forgot she was ever anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee documents the search to find answers. Part mystery, part personal odyssey, the film follows acclaimed filmmaker, Deann Borshay Liem, as she returns to her native Korea to find her “double,” the mysterious girl whose place she took in America. Traversing landscapes of memory, amnesia, and identity, while also uncovering layers of deception in her adoption, Borshay Liem’s moving and provocative film probes the ethics of international adoption and reveals the costs of living a lie.

About the filmmaker: Deann Borshay Liem has over twenty years experience working in development, production, and distribution of independent documentaries. She is producer, director, and writer for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (Sundance, 2000), and executive producer for Spencer Nakasako’s Kelly Loves Tony (PBS, 1998) and AKA Don Bonus (PBS, 1996, Emmy Award). She served as co-producer for Special Circumstances (PBS, 2009), which follows Chilean exile, Hector Salgado, as he attempts to reconcile with former interrogators and torturers in Chile. She was the former director of the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM) where she supervised the development, distribution, and broadcast of new films for public television and worked with Congress to support minority representation in public media. A Sundance Institute Fellow and a recipient of a Rockefeller Film/Video Fellowship, Borshay Liem is the director, producer, and writer of the new feature-length documentary, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee.

Co-sponsored by Oakes College, the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, the Department of Film and Digital Media, the Social Documentation Program, the Department of History, and Stevenson College, this event is free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Christine Hong at cjhong@ucsc.edu. For disability-related needs, please contact AA/PIRC at 459-5349 or aapirc@ucsc.edu.