BLAST FROM THE PAST - Jennifer Lin talks Ten Times Better
Jennifer Lin's new documentary TEN TIMES BETTER is the story of the life and times of George Lee, the first Asian dancer in the history of the New York City Ballet. He was also one of the first Asian dancers on Broadway. Lee's remarkable life started in Hong Kong, wove its way through Shanghai, included two years in a refugee camp in the Philippines, and came finally to the United States. George Lee passed away on April 20 in Las Vegas, where he had lived and worked as a card dealer in a casino for many years. He was 90. In honor both of George and of Jennifer's great film about him, we're re-running our talk with her from late last year.
Check your local PBS listings to find out when your local station will be running TEN TIMES BETTER on AMERICAN MASTERS:
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters
TEN TIMES BETTER also is doing the rounds of the film festivals right now. See when it's coming to your area on this website:s://www.tentimesbetterfilm.com
Jennifer Lin's documentary about George Lee, who went from ballet student/refugee in Shanghai to the NYC Ballet, is now airing on PBS American Masters . Here's Jennifer talking about the film from late last year.
Jennifer Lin
I was born with the reporter’s gene. It’s all I ever wanted to do from the time I was in high school and listening to a young local radio reporter named Andrea Mitchell (yes, that Andrea Mitchell) interviewing my father about soaring health-care costs. I had the good fortune of working for one of the finest newspapers in the business, The Philadelphia Inquirer, but always as a reporter, never an editor. Reporters had more fun. There’s nothing like the rush of a big breaking story. I worked as a correspondent in New York, Washington, D.C., and Beijing.
My son and daughter were tots when I told them, “We’re moving to China!” They thought Beijing was somewhere west of Philadelphia on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. My husband, Bill Stieg, uprooted his own career and we traded in our Ford station wagon for Flying Pigeon bicycles. I reported from all over Asia—Hong Kong during the city’s 1997 handover; Jakarta during the fall of President Suharto; Taiwan during tension with China. But of all the news and issues I covered, the assignment that captivated me the most was the one right in front of me, the story of my Chinese family.
