WHO KILLED VINCENT CHIN?
SYNOPSIS
In June of 1982, a 27 year-old Chinese American draftsman, Vincent Chin, was celebrating his bachelor party at a Detroit area strip club when he encountered a foreman at Chrysler Motors named Ronald Ebens. According to some witnesses, Ebens mistook Chin for a Japanese man, and hurled ethnic insults, blaming him for the loss of jobs in the then-depressed American auto industry.
By the end of the night Ron Ebens, aided by his stepson Mike Nitz, had bludgeoned Vincent Chin to death with a baseball bat. After Ebens and Nitz pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were each sentenced to three-year probation and $3,000 fine, the Asian American community was outraged. Who Killed Vincent Chin? chronicles the historic campaign for Justice for Vincent Chin spearheaded by his mother Lily, Detroit’s American Citizens for Justice, and a nationwide coalition of activists. Nominated for an Academy Award, Who Killed Vincent Chin? became a landmark in Asian American filmmaking and a classic in US independent cinema.
A film by Renee Tajima-Peña & Christine Choy.
SCREENINGS + AWARDS
PBS “POV” broadcast – Academy Award nomination, Best Feature Documentary – Museum of Modern Art and Film Society of Lincoln Center 20th anniversary retrospective, "ND/NF Classics: Ten Documentaries from Twenty Years of New Directors/New Films" – Dupont-Columbia University Award – Hawaii International Film Festival Best Documentary – New Directors New Films opening night film – Peabody Award – Sundance Film Festival
FILM NEWS
Newly restored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2021
National Film Registry of the Library of Congress Inducted in 2021
Who Killed Vincent Chin? is a film rich in paradox. To begin with, its title is ironic: Vincent Chin’s murderer is known, and to an extent has accepted responsibility. But identifying “who” is not the incisive point of this complex and ambitious documentary “about” a young Chinese American who is clubbed to death by a white man. Instead the filmmakers, Christine Choy and Renee Tajima, chart the sudden collision of two American dreams outside a topless bar one hot Detroit night in 1982, and describe the labyrinthine course that justice, susceptible to competing pressures, pursues over the next four years. Vincent Chin is a film with no easy answers and broad implications.
Sundance Film Festival
This riveting 90-minute documentary pieces it all together-in the fashion of ``Rashomon,`` the producers boldly state-using first-person accounts from perpetrators, victims, friends, family members, lawyers, activists and cops. It is embellished by the liberal use of television news footage, as well as Motown sounds. It provides a full picture, not only of the events on the night Chin was beaten, but of some of the other factors that surrounded his death: the aspirations of Asian-Americans, the power of the media, the mysteries of justice and life in Detroit. Facts and emotions swirl, and none of the latter are as poignant as the tear-choked pleas of Chin`s mother, Lily, who cries desperately throughout,``I want justice for my son.``
Chicago Tribune
Who did kill Vincent Chin? Obviously, the literal answer to the documentary's title is Ronald Ebens and his grown stepson. Yet, the film, through its many layers, aims to ask more subtle questions about the struggles of Asian immigrants in blue-collar Detroit, different cultural notions of responsibility, the ugliness of language and the nature of American law.
New York Times
