Yun Suh
City of Borders
Director, producer, writer Yun Suh's love of visual storytelling sparked at age 8 when she immigrated to Connecticut from South Korea without knowing a word of English. Television and movies became a vital classroom where she learned the language and the American culture. Her powerful documentary City of Borders follows the community at the only gay bar in Jerusalem where Israelis and Palestinians share common need for belonging and acceptance while facing extraordinary risks for challenging society's greatest taboos. City of Borders premiered at the 2009 Berlin International Film Festival where it won a special Teddy (Audience) Award and continues to screen worldwide from Toronto to Tokyo. City of Borders is expected to broadcast on PBS in 2010.
Suh received training in media production while working as a journalist in broadcast radio and television news for over nine years. As a journalist, she has traveled around the globe from Panama to Palestine. She is a founding member of Apex Express on KPFA Radio in Berkeley, CA, a weekly hour-long magazine show profiling current affairs and arts in the Asian and Asian American community. Her journalism nominations include Best Radio Documentary for Sabra & Shatilla (2003), on the survivors of the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Lebanese refugee camps, and an Emmy nomination for news feature Comfort Women (2001), a story of an illiterate Korean woman who paints to break her 50-year silence on being forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army.
Prior to journalism, Suh studied biology, psychology and poetry at University of California at Berkeley. She has been a guest lecturer for June Jordan's Poetry for the People program at University of California at Berkeley where she has taught Arab, Asian and African Poetry. Her poetry has been anthologized in several books including two volumes for the National Library of Poetry.
Suh is currently developing a documentary set in North Korea and writing a screenplay on gay marriage while working as a part-time assignment editor at KRON-TV Channel 4 in San Francisco.
Suh is available to screen her award-winning documentary CITY OF BORDERS and to host post-screening Q & A discussions.
Contact the lecture bureau for booking information, lecture schedules, speaking engagement questions and to check the availability of Yun Suh appearing at your next special event.
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