Sook-Yin Lee

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Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox musical artist Template:Infobox Chinese Sook-Yin Lee is a Canadian broadcaster, musician, film director, actress and multimedia artist. She is a former MuchMusic VJ and a former radio host on CBC Radio. She has appeared in films, notably in the John Cameron Mitchell movie Shortbus.

Early and personal life

Lee was born in Vancouver, British Columbia.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She is the second daughter of father, Leo Lee,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> from Hong Kong and a mother from Mainland China,<ref name=Balkissoon/> Lee was raised as a devout Roman Catholic.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Her father was a post-World War II orphan from Hong Kong, and her mother an escapee from Communist China<ref name=Balkissoon/> who remained in and out of psychiatric institutions when Lee was young.<ref name=McLaren>Template:Cite web</ref> Lee also has a sister, Deanna, a Vancouver-based artist.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She grew up within a strict, secretive and unstable family.<ref name=Balkissoon/> When Lee was 15, her parents split up and Lee ran away from home, for a time living on the street<ref>Sook-Yin Lee, comment on Definitely Not the Opera, CBC radio, 2 November 2010</ref> before eventually living with a "community of lesbians and artists".<ref name=Balkissoon>Template:Cite web</ref>

In the mid-1980s, she became the lead singer for Bob's Your Uncle, a Vancouver alternative rock band.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Lee often incorporated performance art techniques into the band's melodic rock. When that band broke up, Lee pursued a solo music career, releasing several solo albums and performing as an actor in theatre, film and television projects. She was the lead singer for the band Slan.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Neko Case covered Lee's song "Knock Loud" on her 2001 EP Canadian Amp.

She had a relationship with the comic artist Chester Brown from 1992 until 1996. She is depicted in several of his comics. He moved to Vancouver for two years to be with her, and moved back to Toronto with her when she became a VJ for MuchMusic. He also drew the cover for her 1996 solo album Wigs 'n Guns. Brown's relationship with Lee is the last boyfriend/girlfriend relationship he had, as he explains in Paying for It. They remain good friends, and Brown has contributed artwork to her productions as recently as 2009's Year of the Carnivore; in 2024, Lee directed the film adaptation of Brown's graphic novel Paying for It.<ref>Alex Hudson, "TIFF 2024: 'Paying for It' Is a Wonderful Bit of Oversharing". Exclaim!, September 6, 2024.</ref>

She was later in a relationship with writer and musician Adam Litovitz, who was also her frequent artistic collaborator, from 2007 until 2018.<ref name=candid>"Sook-Yin Lee: Candid with the Camera — Except for One Thing". Toronto Star, 11 June 2010.</ref> They occasionally performed improvised musical sets under the name LLVK, short for Lee/Litovitz/Valdivia/Kamino, and formed the band Jooj, which released its debut album in 2015.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> An album of music written by Sook-Yin and Adam was completed in 2020 and was released under the title of jooj two in April 2021 on Mint Records.

She resides in Toronto.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Lee is bisexual and gender-fluid.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Career

Broadcasting

Lee became a VJ for MuchMusic in 1995, hosting MuchMusic's alternative music show The Wedge.<ref name=vice2013> Template:Cite web</ref><ref> Template:Cite web </ref>

In 1995, on the day that sexual orientation was held to be protected under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms by the Supreme Court of Canada in the Egan v Canada case, Lee celebrated the decision by kissing a woman on the air.<ref> Template:Cite web </ref> She later appeared on the cover of Xtra! in 1997.

During her last appearance as a MuchMusic VJ in 2001, Lee and her co-host turned their backs to the camera, and mooned the audience on live television.<ref name=vice2013 /><ref> Template:Cite web</ref>

She became the new host of CBC Radio One's Saturday afternoon pop culture magazine radio-show Definitely Not the Opera in 2002.<ref name=straight2016> Template:Cite news</ref> Definitely Not the Opera completed its run in 2016.<ref name=straight2016 />

In the fall of 2004, she hosted a documentary celebrating Terry Fox as part of the CBC Television series The Greatest Canadian.<ref> Template:Cite book </ref>

During the Summer of 2008, Lee was a member of the CBC Olympic broadcasting team for the Beijing games.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> During the games, Lee filmed a TV spot that touched upon concerns regarding human rights and political issues.

In 2016, Lee hosted the 10 episode summer series Sleepover for CBC Radio,<ref> Template:Cite web</ref><ref> Template:Cite web</ref> which continued as a podcast<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> until 2018.

In 2020, Lee hosted Landscape Artist of the Year Canada, a Canadian adaptation of Landscape Artist of the Year, for Makeful.<ref>Greg David, "Makeful TV launches Landscape Artist of the Year Canada, a new competition series hosted by Sook-Yin Lee". TV, eh?, January 16, 2020.</ref>

Film work

As a feminist, Lee specifically works on films that discuss feminist and/or racial issues. Escapades of One Particular Mr. Noodle (1990) was her debut as a feminist film director. This film was produced by Studio D, a primarily feminist film production company, as one of the short films in their segment Five Feminist Minutes (1990).

Lee played the lead character Alessa Woo, alongside fellow Canadian actor Adam Beach, in Helen Lee's 2001 film The Art of Woo.

Lee also has a smaller part in John Cameron Mitchell's film Hedwig and the Angry Inch, playing Kwahng-Yi, a guitarist in Hedwig's rock band made up of Korean-born army wives.

In 2003, she became the centre of controversy when Mitchell first announced that he was casting Lee in his film Shortbus (released 2006). Due to Mitchell's announcement that the film was to be sexually explicit in nature – Lee and other cast members perform non-simulated intercourse and masturbation on screen – the CBC initially threatened to fire her.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In making Shortbus, Mitchell sought to make a film about love and sex without censoring itself.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Celebrities such as director Francis Ford Coppola, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, actress Julianne Moore and artist and musician Yoko Ono, as well as the CBC's listening audience, rallied behind her, and the CBC ultimately relented.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The movie premiered at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Her performance in Shortbus earned Lee the 2007 International Cinephile Society Award for Best Supporting Actress.<ref name="20007 ICS AWARD WINNERS">Template:Cite web</ref> This was not her first film that explores a sexually explicit nature. She acted in 3 Needles (2005), a short film about HIV and AIDS. The film takes place in various locations around the world - Canada, China, and South Africa - demonstrating the universality of STDs/STIs.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2012, she was chosen to play Olivia Chow in the biopic television film Jack, alongside Rick Roberts as Jack Layton.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The film aired on CBC Television in 2013. She subsequently won the 2014 Canadian Screen Award for Best Performance by a Lead Dramatic Actress in a Program/Mini-Series.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Lee stars in, wrote and directed The Brazilian segment of the 2008 film Toronto Stories.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Her feature film directorial debut Year of the Carnivore premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2009. Lee, Litovitz and Buck 65 also collaborated on the film's soundtrack, which garnered a Genie Award nomination for Best Original Score at the 31st Genie Awards.

Her second feature film as a director, Octavio Is Dead!, premiered at the Inside Out Film and Video Festival in 2018, and received several Canadian Screen Award nominations at the 7th Canadian Screen Awards.

Theatrical work

In 2013, Lee wrote and starred in a theatrical performance show How Can I Forget? at Toronto's Rhubarb and Summerworks theatre festivals.<ref> Template:Cite news It went on to be performed in conjunction with her solo art show We Are Light Rays at the Ottawa Art Gallery. </ref> She and Litovitz also staged Morrice Fled: Two Paintings Talk to Each Other, a pop-up performance at the Art Gallery of Ontario based on the art of James Wilson Morrice, in January. In 2014, Lee choreographed a dance solo for Syreeta Hector as part of On Display for Toronto Dance Theatre. From 2015 to 2017, she created and directed Sphere of Banished Suffering with dancers Jenn Goodwin, Mairi Greig, and Charlie McGettigan with Litovitz developed in residencies with LUFF art+dialogue, Dancemakers, Artscape Sandbox, and premiered at the Festival of New Dance 2017.

In 2019, she wrote and appeared in Unsafe, a documentary theatre production on the topic of censorship, at Canadian Stage.<ref>"Sook-Yin Lee's Unsafe has little to say about call-out culture". Now, March 18, 2019.</ref>

Discography

Filmography

See also

References

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