Q&A with editors Jean Tsien moderated by Netsanet Negussie
In 1970s San Francisco, Korean immigrant Chol Soo Lee is wrongly convicted of a Chinatown gang murder. After spending years fighting to survive, journalist K.W. Lee takes an interest in his case, igniting an unprecedented social movement.
Jean Tsien has been working in documentary for 40 years as an editor, producer, and consultant. Tsien’s editing debut, Something Within Me, won three Awards at the 1993 Sundance Film Festival. Her other editing credits include the 2001 Academy Award nominee, Scottsboro: An American Tragedy; three Peabody Award-winning films: Malcolm X: Make It Plain, Travis and Solar Mamas; and the 2020 Primetime Emmy® for Best Documentary The Apollo. In 2021 Tsien received two Peabody Awards: one for executive producing the landmark PBS series Asian Americans; and one for producing 76 Days, winner of the Primetime Emmy® for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking. Tsien has served as an editing advisor at many workshops around the world. She is a recipient of the 2018 Art of Editing Mentorship Award, presented by Sundance Institute. Tsien is a member of American Cinema Editors and a Governor of the Documentary Branch of the Academy.
Netsanet Negussie (she/her)is a producer at ABC News Studios where she produces premium documentaries for Hulu and network television specials. She is also a producer on a forthcoming documentary feature film directed by Oscar-nominated and Emmy® Award-winning Yance Ford and produced by Multitude Films. The film is slated to premiere in 2023. Her previous credits include Homefront, an episode of Sesame Workshop’s NAACP Image Award-nominated documentary series Through Our Eyes, which follows three children of veteran families as they cope with the emotional impact of having a wounded parent (2021, HBO Max). Through Our Eyes: Homefront screened at Academy Awards®-Qualifying Heartland International Film Festival and had a special screening at the White House in 2021 as part of First Lady Dr. Jill Biden’s Hidden Helpers Coalition campaign launch. Homefrontis a 2023 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Finalist. Netsanet also produced I Am Not Going to Change 400 Years in Four (2020, ITVS/Independent Lens) through Chicken & Egg Pictures' Docs by the Dozen initiative. The short documentary takes a critical look into the role of reform-minded district attorney Satana Deberry and her efforts to curb gun violence in Durham, North Carolina. Netsanet earned her BS degree in neuroscience with a minor in philosophy from a small liberal arts school in Minnesota. She earned her MA degree in journalism from the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism and is also a German Fulbright Scholar in the commission’s Professional Journalism Program where her studies focus on the matrix of immigration policy, disinformation, climate crisis and extremism.