We were lucky to catch up with Annette Cho recently and have shared our conversation below.

Annette, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My relationship with my parents has long been complex. It cannot be reduced to unwavering love and support alone; there were wounds, the slow work of understanding each other as human beings, and at times, the pain of letting things go.

However, within all that complexity, there is much I am grateful for, and one of those things is the trust they have in me. Trusting my own life always seemed abstract. When failure is possible, how can anyone truly trust that things will be okay?

Last year was a messy one, and I found myself confronting the greatest failure of my life. Yet my parents welcomed my failure and acknowledged how hard I had tried, even before I was able to do so myself. When I asked how and why, they spoke of the trust I had earned over a decade of commitment and perseverance, and of their understanding of embracing life’s uncontrollable factors. Through this, I learned humility, the grace of letting things be even when you have given everything, and a truer sense of resilience.

Annette, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a film/media producer and visual artist, I have received funding from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) for an upcoming documentary project, Mystory Mukbang, fiscally sponsored by Third World Newsreel. Following seven years of professional training in visual arts in Korea, I transitioned to filmmaking and relocated to the U.S. to pursue an MFA in Creative Producing, in hopes of connecting with a more diverse, global audience.

I believe that art is only complete once it reaches and resonates with its audience. Through my various experiences in activism, multimedia, and documentary filmmaking, I am continuously unlearning and redefining the path of audience engagement. This leads me to craft work that is both accessible and compelling—utilizing engaging formats like Mukbang (a Korean eating show) or strategic impact campaigns.

Rooted in equity shaped by my father’s resistance against Korea’s dictatorship, I came to storytelling as a former activist who believes in its power to heal and empower. I tell stories drawn from my own life and the lives of those I love—stories that continually push me to challenge the dominant hegemonies that shape the world for historically marginalized communities. Currently, my work focuses on diaspora narratives, extending into gender and queer perspectives.

As a capstone project for my fellowship at Lincoln Center, I created a multimedia project titled The Newcomer, anchored by a short animated film paired with interactive digital art and a workshop following Lincoln Center’s aesthetic education pedagogy. It explored my journey to the U.S. as a newcomer, reflecting on Korea’s modernization and its admiration for the West, while ultimately discovering pride in the cultural hybridity of Korea that thrives in New York City’s Koreatown. This project was supported by the Asian American Arts Alliance (A4), and the animation was screened at an Academy Award-qualifying film festival.

Building on The Newcomer, the NYSCA funded documentary Mystory Mukbang expands the conversation on cultural hybridity into a broader, collective context. Through interviews with members of the Korean diaspora from diverse backgrounds, the documentary examines memories of food as windows into both personal and shared histories. With the slogan “Our presence paves the culture,” this documentary explores how everyday memories of food forge paths of unique cultural hybridity—highlighting the agency and significance within these moments and positioning the lived experiences of people of color and diaspora communities as a powerful challenge to Western dominance.

Mystory Mukbang is the culmination of the journey I have taken as an artist over the past decade. Drawing on the Mukbang format to invite participants to share their memories of food, I bring my background as a visual artist to create a hand-drawn tablecloth beneath the Mukbang setting, capturing those memories as works of art. To this, I add experience from interning at a documentary media company in South Korea through a position offered by a Sundance documentary editor, alongside a grounding in impact campaigning rooted in my years as an activist. I am truly excited for this next chapter, to explore the impact and power of art and build genuine relationships with participants along the way.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

As a creative producer, I believe in the power of the audience, for I am one myself. As an artist, and simply as a person with overflowing emotions that can only be released through expression, my goal is to transform these feelings into something beautiful, making them accessible to others so we may find resolution and a little more ease in life.

Having made managing my emotions a lifelong task, I take pride in confronting them and in the tolerance I have built. This process has allowed me to accept and respect the hardships of others, understanding them as three-dimensional individuals rather than in black and white, while pursuing optimism along the way. This attitude toward life is reflected in my artwork as well.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

As a very emotional person, I relieve my negative feelings through expression. For me, creating artwork is a way of processing and releasing my emotions into a ‘chewable’ form, both for myself and for the audience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://annetteeunkyoung.wixsite.com/impact
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annetteeunkyoung/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/annette-cho-49aa7b265/

Image Credits

2. Still image from the animation The Newcomer
3. Still image from the animation The Newcomer
4. Photo by Erin Patrice O’Brien