Min Sook Lee has directed numerous critically-acclaimed feature documentaries, including: Donald Brittain Gemini winner Tiger Spirit, Hot Docs Best Canadian Feature winner Hogtown, Gemini nominated El Contrato and Canadian Screen Award winner, The Real Inglorious Bastards.
Lee is a recipient of numerous awards, including the Cesar E. Chavez Black Eagle Award, and the Alanis Obomsawin Award for Commitment to Community and Resistance. Canada’s oldest labour arts festival, Mayworks, has named the Min Sook Lee Labour Arts Award in her honour.
Lee’s most recent feature, Migrant Dreams tells the undertold story of migrant workers struggling against Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) that treats foreign workers as modern-day indentured labourers. In 2017, Migrant Dreams garnered the prestigious Canadian Hillman Prize which honours journalists whose work identifies important social and economic issues in Canada.
Lee is an Assistant Professor at OCAD University. Her area of research and practice focuses on the critical intersections of art+social change in labour, border politics, migration and social justice movements.
"Racism has deep roots in Canada and part of our work is recognizing how entangled it is with modes of power and play," writes Min Sook Lee. "The continued practice of blackface amongst university students reflects this intransigence of racist attitudes and practices. As a working-class immigrant/settler in Canada I know what it means to be dehumanized through mockery and caricature. By bringing this multifaceted research project to OCAD University, we are recognizing that this campus not only needs to have the conversation, but more importantly, is actively committed to building the movement for racial justice amidst our communities."
