Shin Eun-jung (1972 - 2012)
Shin Eun-jung was born in 1972, in Gwangju, South Korea, where a bloody military assault was repelled by the 1980 people’s uprising.
In college, she majored in psychology, after which she worked as a TV scriptwriter for 9 years. From 2000 to 2004, she was director of the Gwangju Human Rights Film Festival, a position that gave her opportunities to screen documentaries from around the world. For 5 years, she taught college students how to write TV scripts as well as many other classes.
In 2004, she married an American scholar-activist, George Katsiaficas, and moved to Boston. In the summer of 2005, she studied English—her first encounter with Harvard University. She attended many Harvard public events sponsored by Harvard’s Kennedy School, the Korea Institute and others. Back in Gwangju from 2008 to 2009, she taught documentary filmmaking at the Media Center in Gwangju while her husband was writing a book about Asian social movements. Her students in Gwangju inspired her to make her own documentaries. In 2009, she collaborated on two films. The first, produced with Choi Seong Uk, dealt with a serious dispute over demolition of the old Provincial Hall building, site of the last stand of the 1980 uprising. The building was slated to be torn down for construction of a mammoth Asian Cultural Center (designed by a Harvard graduate) until family members of those who had been killed in the military’s assault were able to preserve part of it. That film was shown at a local film festival. Together with a women’s media group, her second film portrayed the lives of female merchants who had worked for decades in Dae-in market, one of the oldest traditional markets in Gwangju. Returning to Boston in 2010, she finished a 10-minute English-language video about the Gwangju Uprising. That film was shown as the opening movie at an international conference commemorating the uprising’s 30th anniversary and is available here.
After she returned to Boston in 2010, she initiated a new documentary project about Harvard University. As she came to realize Harvard’s incredible influence, she wanted to uncover the origin of its enormous powers. For more than a year, she conducted extensive research and interviewed many American intellectuals.
Through Verita$, her hope was to help people understand Harvard’s real history, which is all too often unrecognized in public discussions. For Verita$, she was awarded Best Director of a Documentary at the 2011 New York International Film Festival. The film was also selected and screened in festivals in Turkey, Korea and San Francisco.
Shin Eun-jung’s work always sought to find truth and seek justice by challenging views that do not penetrate surface appearances. In less than two years before her tragic death in 2012, she produced Korean and English versions of Verita$, published a Korean book version that expands upon the film, and began translating that book into English.
In her memory, the Director Shin Eun-jung Documentary Prize has been established, and an English translation of her book is being completed.
