In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee

Deann Borshay Liem searches for her “double” to resolve a case of mistaken identity when a South Korean orphanage switched their identities.

Film Signature Image
Series
POV, Global Voices
Premiere Date
September 14, 2010
Length
90 minutes
Funding Initiative
Open Call
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2010 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival-Special Jury Award, Best Director
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2010 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival-Special Jury Award, Best Editor
  • Award laurels-r Created with Sketch.
    2010 San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival-Audience Award
  • Headshot of woman
    Producer/Director

    Deann Borshay Liem

    Deann Borshay Liem is an Emmy Award-winning documentarian known for films that explore adoption, war, and memory. Her films include First Person Plural, In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee, Geographies of Kinship, Memory of Forgotten War, Crossings, and the oral history project, Legacies of the Korean War. She is producer for Vivien’s Wild Ride.

    Producer

    Charlotte Lagarde

    Charlotte Lagarde's documentary Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka'ehukai (2002) about Hawaiian legend Rell Sunn was broadcast internationally. In the US, it won PBS Independent Lens Audience Award 2003, the Audience Award at both the San Francisco International Film Festival and the Newport Beach Film Festival, and Best Documentary Award at the Ashland Show more Independent Film Festival. Lagarde's productions Voting in America (2004), Every Child Should Have a Chance (2001), Tribal Sovereignty: Unplugged (1998), and Juvenile Justice: Unplugged (1997), are distributed in public schools throughout the United States, and the latter was screened at the White House for public policy makers. Lagarde's documentaries Swell (1996), about four generations of female surfers in Santa Cruz, California (Gold Apple from the National Educational Media Network) and Zeuf (1994), a documentary about a woman surfer's struggle with breast cancer (Directors' Choice award at the Black Maria Film and Video Festival) were broadcast on PBS stations and the Sundance Channel, and are currently in distribution on home video. Lagarde is the executive producer of 2005’s Reporter Zero, directed by Carrie Lozano (The Weather Underground). Lagarde holds an MA in documentary filmmaking from Stanford University, and a BA in Political Science. She founded Swell Cinema in 1996 and teaches media studies in high school. Show less

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    The Film

    In the 1960s, the Sun Duck Orphanage in South Korea switched the identities of two orphans when an American family adopted one of them. In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem goes on a quest to search for her “double” — a girl named Cha Jung Hee — in an attempt to resolve a case of mistaken identity and in the process explores the complexities of international transracial adoptions.

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