Register Here: https://ucsc.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_TG-yaTWESJWYiE9PQ1In_w
Please join us for a conversation on the war-forged geopolitics behind the Korean adoptee diaspora and adoptee organizing with the director of Geographies of Kinship Deann Borshay Liem and adoption rights activist Kim Stoker, facilitated by Amy Mihyang Ginther (Theater Arts).
Please view the film before the event. Attendees with an @ucsc.edu email may watch the film for free at this website (under "school email films," click Geographies of Kinship): https://www.newday.com/watch-now
About the film: In a tale about the rise of Korea’s global adoption program, four adult adoptees who were raised in foreign families return to their country of birth, mapping the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew. Along the way they question the policies and practices that led South Korea to become the world's largest “sending country”—with 200,000 children adopted out to North America, Europe, and Australia. Emboldened by what they have experienced and learned, they become advocates for birth family and adoptee rights, support for single mothers, and historical reckoning.
Participant Bios:
Deann Borshay Liem has over twenty years’ experience working in development, production, and distribution of independent documentaries. She produced, directed, and wrote the Emmy Award-nominated documentary, First Person Plural (Sundance, 2000) and the award-winning films, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee (PBS, 2010) and Memory of Forgotten War (with Ramsay Liem; PBS, 2015). She formerly directed 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 former Sundance Institute Fellow, Deann directed, produced, and wrote the new documentary, Geographies of Kinship.
Kim Stoker lived in South Korea for almost twenty years. She was a leading activist for adoptee rights with Adoptee Solidarity Korea (ASK), the first adoptee-run political advocacy group of its kind. Returning to the country of her birth and building a life there has indelibly changed her outlook on the world, on the Koreas, and on international adoption. She's currently based back in the United States where she works as a writer and editor.
Amy Mihyang Ginther is a queer, transracially adopted professor at University of California, Santa Cruz in the Theater Arts Department. She is an award-winning theatre maker, scholar, and activist who has lived, taught and performed in the US, Europe, South America, and Asia. Her work utilizes devising methods to create documentary/autobiographical theatre that focuses on themes of loss, belonging, grief, race, power, and representation. Ginther’s last play, Homeful, was performed Off-Broadway (Best Storytelling Show), in London, and at Exit Theater (Best of Fringe, sold-out run). She is currently devising a musical, No Danger of Winning, that examines the experiences of former contestants of color from The Bachelor/ette and is editing a volume on decolonial, anti-racist actor training (Routledge).
Event free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Christine Hong at cjhong@ucsc.edu.