Jessica Yu


Jessica Lingmin Yu is an American film director, writer, producer, and editor. She has directed documentary films, dramatic films, and television shows.
Yu won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1996 for . Yu's film Last Call at the Oasis is based upon Alex Prud'homme's Ripple Effect. Her more recent films have been: Misconception, ForEveryone.Net, a documentary film about the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and a Netflix comedy Maria Bamford: Old Baby. In 2019, Yu was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Direction for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special" for Fosse/Verdon "Glory".

Early life and education

Yu grew up in Los Altos Hills, California. Her father, Dr. Kou-ping Yu, an oncologist, was born in Shanghai. Her mother, Connie Young Yu, writer and historian, is a third-generation Californian.
Yu graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto. She was a reporter for the school newspaper, The Oracle.
She went on to attend Yale University, where she was a two-time NCAA All-American and three-time All-Ivy in fencing. As a world-class foilist, she was a member of the Junior World Team and the United States national team at the World Championships and World University Games. Yu graduated from Yale University in 1987 summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, with a bachelor's degree in English.

Career

After graduation, Yu thought of pursuing law school like her peers. However, her father discouraged her from doing so. She discovered film production while searching for a job that allowed flexible hours to allow her to compete in fencing. She started as a production assistant in 1989 on a few commercials, where she got to arrange frozen noodles on forks and re-park cars. When she started working in documentary, she became more and more intrigued by the process. Yu refused to attend film school and gained her film education on the job. She focuses on making documentaries but says that one day she'd love to make a fully animated comedy feature. The opportunity to make film is a random occurrence for Yu. Her documentary films present worldwide issues that people face every day and allow the subjects to speak for themselves as much as possible. She is adamant that story should come before politics. Her films intend to inform the general public to incite people to become active in every day issues such as water conservation and regulation. When not making documentaries and feature films, Yu spends time directing television shows.

1990s

Yu began her career in 1993 with her short Sour Death Balls, a silent black-and-white montage of assorted subjects’ reactions to blindingly bitter candy, which was shot on an old school Bell & Howell wind-up camera. She got her inspirations from daily interactions in her life, i.e. when a child offered local people sour candy. Yu sent the short film to film festivals and became her first feature at Telluride Film Festival in 1993. Yu made her first documentary, Men of Reenaction, which explores the extremes of people searching for authenticity through Civil War reenacting.
Perhaps her most famous work was her Academy Award-winning Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien. The documentary short features Berkeley writer Mark O'Brien, a disabled poet with an iron lung. His editor at the Pacific News Service, Sandy Close, introduced the pair and suggested that a film be made. The short debuted at the 1996 Sundance Film Festival and won several honors, including the International Documentary Association Achievement Award for Best Documentary, before the Academy Awards.

2000s

In the 2000s, Yu's chance to work in episodic TV came when she received an invitation to apprentice at John Wells Productions as the first participant of their director diversity program. Shadowing directors, Yu sensed she was a guinea pig. “If you screw this up,” she told herself, “they’ll never let another woman of color from documentaries do this again.” While working for John Wells’ production company, she began directing in television for shows like Grey's Anatomy and The West Wing. On her first directorial assignment, an episode of The West Wing, Yu was heartened that Wells encouraged her stylistic input. “He made a point of saying, ‘You should bring your own ideas to the table,’ rather than just follow prescribed formula.” So she decided to open with a series of mood-establishing low, wide-angle shots to signal the calm before the gathering storm.
She directs a sport comedy film, Ping Pong Playa, that explores Asian family culture through a Chinese ping pong son that is trying to prove himself to his family. Her producer friends, Joan Huang and Jeff Guo, approached her with the idea of working on a comedy together. They felt the time was right to have an obnoxious Asian American character on the screen. Her and her comrades felt that Asian American cinema had plenty of good dramas, and wanted to fill the void of superficial comedy. She tried to bring the same loose hand and adaptability she used for documentaries to scripted material. Her approach to Ping Pong Playa was to “have a lighter touch, especially with actors” to give them a sense of freedom.

2010s

In her later documentaries such as Last Call at The Oasis and Misconception , Yu focused on capturing the big picture and understanding how these issues intertwined with other aspects of life such as climate, population, and the environment. Last Call at The Oasis addresses the water crisis in the United States, and working on the film made her consider the impact of the crisis on her children and their children. This project became more personal to Yu and compelled her to complete it. It took six months of research prior to filming, as Yu wanted to create the big picture of the facts and threats of the water crisis in the domestic United States.
Last Call at the Oasis inspired Yu to direct her 2014 documentary Misconception, which paints the population issues from a person-to-person point of view. While filming Last Call at the Oasis people questioned the purpose of acting on water conservation because they cannot control the population growth affecting it. Her main goal is to take this topic and tie with emotionally, entertaining, and interesting stories.
Majority of her work after 2015 is focused toward television production and directing. For Netflix, she has directed episodes of the Netflix dramas 13 Reasons Why and Hollywood and has done Maria Bamford's comedy special, Old Baby.

Personal life

Yu is married to author Mark Salzman. They and their daughters, Ava and Esme, live in Los Angeles.
Jessica has an older sister, Jennifer Yu, a technical publications manager, and a younger brother, Martin Yu, an actor.

Filmography

Film

TV Series

Short

Awards and nominations

YearAwardCategoryWorkResult
1995International Documentary AssociationIDA Award89 mm od Europy
1996International Documentary AssociationIDA AwardBreathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien
1997Academy AwardsDirector of Best Documentary Short SubjectBreathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien
1997Shorts International Film FestivalBest Short FilmBreathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien
1997Asian American International Film FestivalAsian Media AwardBreathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien
1999Sundance Film FestivalGrand Jury Prize: DocumentaryThe Living Museum
2002Online Film & Television AssociationOFTA Television Award: Best Direction in a Drama SeriesThe West Wing
2004Gotham AwardsBest DocumentaryIn the Realms of the Unreal
2004Ojai Film FestivalBest Documentary FeatureIn the Realms of the Unreal
2004Sundance Film FestivalGrand Jury Prize: DocumentaryIn the Realms of the Unreal
2004Vancouver International Film FestivalBest Documentary FeatureIn the Realms of the Unreal
2005Writers Guild of America, USADocumentary Screenplay AwardIn the Realms of the Unreal
2006Primetime Emmy AwardsExceptional Merit in Nonfiction FilmmakingIn the Realms of the Unreal
2007Sundance Film FestivalGrand Jury Prize: DocumentaryProtagonist
2007Yamagata International Documentary Film FestivalRobert and Frances Flaherty PrizeProtagonist
2012Tokyo International Film FestivalEarth Grand PrixLast Call at the Oasis
2012SXSW Film FestivalAudience AwardLast Call at the Oasis
2013Aspen ShortsfestAudience RecognitionThe Guide
2013Hamburg International Short Film FestivalFriese AwardSour Death Balls
2014Tribeca Film FestivalBest Documentary FeatureMisconception
2019Primetime Emmy AwardsOutstanding Directing for a Limited Series, Movie or Dramatic SpecialFosse/Verdon