Jessica Yu

Jessica Yu is an American director, writer, producer, and film editor. She has directed documentary films, dramatic films, and television shows.

Yu won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1997 for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien (1996). Yu's film Last Call at the Oasis (2012) is based upon Alex Prud'homme's Ripple Effect. Her more recent films have been: Misconception (2014), ForEveryone.Net (2016), a documentary film about the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and a Netflix comedy Maria Bamford: Old Baby (2017). In 2019, Yu was nominated for an Emmy Award for "Outstanding Direction for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special" for the Fosse/Verdon episode "Glory".

Early life and education Yu grew up in Los Altos Hills, California. Her father, Dr. John 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. 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 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. 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. 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. Yu made her first documentary, Men of Reenaction (1994), which explores the extremes of people searching for authenticity through Civil War reenacting.

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. It 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.

Yu's 1998 HBO documentary The Living Museum, which follows Creedmoor Psychiatric Center patient Issa Ibrahim, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival.

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.” 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.

The majority of her work after 2015 has been focused on television production and directing. For Netflix, she directed episodes of the dramas 13 Reasons Why and Hollywood and did Maria Bamford's comedy special Old Baby.

2020s Jessica's work in the 2020s includes directing a number of television drama series. This Is Us (Don't Let Me Keep You, 2021), The Morning Show (Kill the Fatted Calf, 2021), In Treatment (Brooke, Laila, Colins, Eladio, 2021).

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 Short films Year Title Director Writer Producer Editor 1990 Rose Kennedy: A Life to Remember 1993 Sour Deaths Balls 1996 Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O'Brien 1998 Better Late 2009 The Kinda Sutra 2012 Meet Mr. Toilet Focus Forward: Short Films, Big Ideas 2014 We the Economy: 20 Short Films, Big Ideas 2016 James Turrell: You Who Look ForEveryone.Net

Film

TV series

Awards and nominations