Saturday, August 28, 2010

Two PBS Documentaries to Look For

Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy by Stephanie Wang-Breal

Tuesday, Aug. 31 at 10 p.m. on PBS; Streaming online from Sept. 1 - Nov. 30 at www.pbs.org/pov/video


What is it like to be torn from your Chinese foster family, put on a plane with strangers and wake up in a new country, family and culture? Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy is the story of Fang Sui Yong, an 8-year-old orphan, and the Sadowskys, the Long Island Jewish family that travels to China to adopt her. Sui Yong (now Faith) is one of 70,000 Chinese children now being raised in the United States. Through her eyes, we witness her struggle with a new identity as she transforms from a timid child into someone that no one — neither her new family nor she — could have imagined.

Wo Ai Ni (I Love You) Mommy is an intimate account of a global phenomenon — transnational and transracial adoption. Little Sui Yong’s adoption takes place against a background of more and more Americans adopting overseas, especially in China. Since the Chinese opened their doors to foreign adoptions in 1992, some 70,000 Chinese children have been brought to the United States, making China the top choice for international adoptions by Americans. 


In this film, a Jewish family adopts an eight year old girl from China. They already have two biologically born sons, (one of whom is prepping for his Bar Mitzvah) and one daughter that they adopted from China a couple years earlier.
  
In “Off And Running,” a Jewish couple in Park Slope / Brooklyn have several adopted children of various backgrounds. In the documentary, their daughter, an African American young woman, who had attended a Jewish day school, decides to search for her birth mother.

To further explore the issues in the film, POV will host a live chat with filmmaker Stephanie Wang-Breal and Donna (mother) and Faith Sadowsky on Wednesday, Sept. 1 at 2 p.m. ET on www.pbs.org/pov.


In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee by Deann Borshay Liem


Airing Tuesday, Sept. 14 on PBS; Streaming online at www.pbs.org/pov/video Sept. 15 - Oct. 15


Her passport said she was Cha Jung Hee. She knew she was not. So began a 40-year deception for a Korean adoptee who came to the U.S. in 1966. Told to keep her true identity secret from her new American family, the 8-year-old girl quickly forgot she had ever been anyone else. But why had her identity been switched? And who was the real Cha Jung Hee? In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee is the search to find the answers, as acclaimed filmmaker Deann Borshay Liem (First Person Plural, POV 2000; encore POV Aug. 10, 2010) returns to her native Korea to find her “double,” the mysterious girl whose place she took in America.
The films will be airing on PBS starting August 31 through September 14. Check your local listings

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