Christine Choy for Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival 2022, previews October fest with honorees announcement

Christine Choy among honorees at the 2022 Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival announced its return in October with a hybrid presentation highlighted by in-person screenings at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa.

Taking place October 7-15, HSDFF announced that Christine Choy (Who Killed Vincent Chin?) will receive the film festival’s Impact Award, and Brent Renaud will posthumously be honored with the Career Achievement Award.

HSDFF Festival Director Sheryl Santacruz, said, “We are all very excited to return to the film festival’s longtime home and arguable epicenter at the Arlington Resort Hotel & Spa. It will be a continuation of the process we began last year to get back to theater screenings and in-person events the way our film fans and filmmakers have come to know and love for three decades now.” Santacruz added, “This year’s honorees are also particularly special for Hot Springs. Choy has made an indelible impact through her trailblazing, activist filmmaking, and we cannot think of a better recipient for this year’s award. And, of course, the Renaud Brothers’ contributions, not just to the Arkansas filmmaking community but to non-fiction storytelling in general, is immeasurable; we are proud to rename this award in Brent’s honor.”

A pioneer Asian American filmmaker, Christine Choy has made more than 85 films and received over sixty international awards, including her Oscar nominated film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987).

She has been a recipient of numerous fellowships, among them: John Simon Guggenheim, Rockefeller, Asian Cultural Council, Fulbright Senior Research, and an award for best cinematography from the Sundance International Film Festival. Choy’s latest collaborative documentary film, The Exiles, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2022. 

Her works have been broadcasted on HBO, PBS, Sundance Channel, Lifetime, NHK, and many other stations.

Her works have also been featured at Berlin, Cannes, Toronto, Chicago, Montreal, Hong Kong, and Pusan International festivals, as well as the Asian American International Festival in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York. She is the founding director of Third World Newsreel and School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, a member of Project Vetting committee of the Film Development Fund, Hong Kong, and an International Trustee Member of the Asia Society from 1995 to 2002. She is a member of AMPAS (Academy of Motion Pictures and Science of the United States of America).

Choy will be on hand to accept her award and participate in a conversation following a retrospective screening of Who Killed Vincent Chin? during the film festival.

Before being killed in Ukraine in March of 2022, Brent Renaud had spent over two decades traveling the world making character driven verité documentaries. Along with his brother Craig, Renaud won almost every major award in television journalism. He won a Peabody for the Vice series Last Chance High, a Columbia Dupont Award for a New York Times story that followed the lives of children injured by the earthquake in Haiti, and another Columbia DuPont Award the following year for a documentary about the drug war in Mexico. The Renaud Brothers’ ten-part series Off to War was the first time a group of soldiers had been filmed for an entire deployment at war and won an Overseas Press Club Award, and an International Documentary Association Award. Brent Renaud also co-founded the Little Rock Film Festival, was a visiting distinguished professor of journalism ethics at the University of Arkansas, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow.     

An alumnus of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival (Off to War premiered at the HSDFF in 2005), Renaud had strong ties both to the film festival and Arkansas as well, via that film and Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later (2007). An award presentation will be made with special guests, and going forward the award will be known as the “Brent Renaud Career Achievement Award.”

Passes to attend the festival are currently on sale, with a full program announcement and single tickets going live in mid-September. For more information on the Hot Springs Documentary Film festival, please visit: hsdfi.org.