When award-winning Korean-American filmmaker Grace Lee was growing up in Missouri, she was the only Grace Lee she knew. As an adult, however, she moved to New York and then California, where everyone she met seemed to know "another Grace Lee." But why did they assume that all Grace Lees were nice, dutiful, piano-playing bookworms? Pursuing the moving target of Asian American female identity, the filmmaker plunges into a clever, highly unscientific investigation of all those Grace Lees who break the mold, including the fiery social activist Grace Lee Boggs, the rebel Grace Lee who tried to burn down her high school, and the Silicon Valley teenager Grace Lee who spends evenings doing homework, playing piano, and painting graphic pictures of death and destruction.

This refreshing film reveals the intriguing contradiction of the “Grace Lee” persona—simultaneously impressive and forgettable, special and generic, an emblem of a subculture and an individual who defies categorization. With wit and charm, THE GRACE LEE PROJECT challenges the cultural investments made in the idea of Grace Lee, all the while sending her a love letter.

Director Biography - Grace Lee

GRACE LEE is an independent producer & director and writer working in both narrative and non-fiction film. She directed the 2014 Peabody Award-winning documentary AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS, which The Hollywood Reporter called ”an entertainingly revealing portrait of the power of a single individual to effect change.” The film premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival where it won its first of six audience awards before its broadcast on the PBS documentary series POV. Her previous documentary THE GRACE LEE PROJECT won multiple awards, broadcast on the Sundance Channel and was called “ridiculously entertaining” by New York Magazine and “ a funny but complex meditation on identity and cultural expectation,” by Variety.

Director Statement

THE GRACE LEE PROJECT is a humorous exploration of what it means to be an Asian woman in America. “Grace Lee” is the quintessential Asian American woman's name, the Asian American “Jane Smith.” By looking at the stories of several women named Grace Lee, THE GRACE LEE PROJECT pursues the moving target of Asian American female identity, revealing a surprising complexity and diversity of experiences.

My name is Grace Lee. I am a filmmaker — not to be mistaken with the other filmmaker Grace Lee in Portland, Oregon, who's originally from Chicago. I'm the Grace Lee from Columbia, Missouri, now residing in Los Angeles, with stops in Seoul, New York, and San Francisco in between. When I was growing up in Missouri in the '70s and '80s, I was the only Grace Lee I knew; in fact, I was usually the only Asian girl around. All this changed when I left for New York, and later California, where I would meet people who would insist on telling me about “another Grace Lee” they once knew.

Most of the time these other Grace Lees were only faintly remembered. They were “good girls” who listened to their parents, violin prodigies, 16-year-old Harvard freshmen, devout Christians. The more I heard about these other Grace Lees, the more I became convinced that “Grace Lee” signified an unmemorable, conservative hyper-achiever, confirming already existing stereotypes of Asian Americans. I secretly feared that my name alone lumped me together with people I felt I had nothing in common with, or worse, with people who made me look bad! Was I just as bland and unmemorable as those other Grace Lees? And who was I to judge these complete strangers? After years of hearing about my alter egos, I had to find out if my fears were founded in reality.

In the course of preparing and making the film, I contacted and was contacted by Grace Lees all over the US and from other parts of the world. I met them through personal referrals, word of mouth and via a website I established called http://www.gracelee.net. My website included a survey that Grace Lees could fill out, another that “friends of Grace Lees” could complete, and an on-going discussion group. Despite the differences in our ages and experiences and where we came from, it quickly became clear to me that there was a genuine sense of community among those of us interested in discovering our Grace Lee-ness (or lack thereof). During the making of THE GRACE LEE PROJECT, both my best hopes and worst fears were confirmed and there were many surprises along the way. I learned what makes each of the Grace Lees that I met unique and what binds us all together. I hope you enjoy the journey as much as I have.