Li-Shin Yu is a director and film editor at Steeplechase Films. She has received many accolades for her work and collaboration with director Ric Burns, including a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Editing for the epic documentary series, New York (1999).
Her work includes co-directing the PBS documentary, The Chinese Exclusion Act (2017). The film highlights racism and discriminatory immigration policies and laws affecting Chinese immigrants beginning in the late 1800s. The documentary illustrates Chinese Americans' strength, resilience, and contributions and their struggle for equal rights under the U.S. Constitution.
Li-Shin Yu is also known for her work on Coming to America (1988) and Stranger Than Paradise (1984).
Yu immigrated to the United States from Taiwan when she was five years old. After graduating from Pomona College in California, she moved to New York in the early 1980s and took filmmaking classes at Columbia University.
Yu began her career collaborating with other New York independent filmmakers, including Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee, Sara Driver, and Peter Wang; more recently, with documentarians Christine Choy, Bill Moyers, Thomas Lennon, and Stanley Nelson.
