Film Description

This Academy-Award nominated film is a powerful statement about racism in working class America. It relates the stark facts of Vincent Chin's brutal murder. A 27-year-old Chinese-American, Chin was celebrating his last days of bachelorhood in a Detroit bar. An argument broke out between him and Ron Ebens, a Chrysler Motors foreman. Ebens shouted ethnic insults, the fight moved outside and, before onlookers, Ebens bludgeoned Chin to death with a baseball bat.

In the ensuing trial, Ebens was let off with a suspended sentence and a small fine. Outrage filled the Asian-American community to the point where they organized an unprecedented civil rights protest. His bereaved mother, brought up to be self-effacing, successfully led a nationwide crusade for a retrial.

This gripping Academy Award-nominated film relentlessly probes the implications of the murder in the streets of Detroit, for the families of those involved, and for the American justice system.

Academy Award Nomination, 1988
Silver Baton, Dupont Award, Columbia University, 1991
San Francisco International Film Festival, 1988
Best Documentary, Hawaii International Film Festival, 1988

"A haunting, disturbing and utterly compelling account of a multi-layered tragedy." - Los Angeles Times

"Totally absorbing - top-notch documentary." - Booklista

"With brilliant intercutting back and forth between all the parties at interest... this film burns through the mind long after it has left the screen." - Jerry Tallmer, New York Post