Legendary documentary filmmaker and educator Loni Ding passed away on February 20 in Berkeley, California. A number of her colleagues and students have already posted beautiful tributes online. A few excerpts (please click on the names below to read the writers' full posts):

Barbara Abrash:

Working with Loni over the years, I began to think of her as a kind of warrior - always going into action for what she believed in. So I asked her how she thought of herself. She was, she said, still the little girl shuttling between her parents' herbal medicine shops - one in San Francisco's Chinatown, the other downtown - on the trolley. Going between two worlds with wide-open eyes, registering the faces, gestures, and scenes all around her. A warrior with open eyes and and open mind - that's how I will remember Loni.

... the first time I met Loni Ding (and pretty much every time I saw her after then), I thought, "Loni Ding is genius and crazy!" Crazy in the best way of course! She embodied life. Loni Ding had so much vibrant spunkiness to her. She knew what she wanted and got it. She knew what she wanted from us as well and had no problem letting us know. Her outlook, her art, and her way of being complexified for me what it could mean to be Asian American.

My time in Loni's class was a defining moment in finding my voice, my self.

I can't even try to guess how many documentarians Loni trained at Berkeley during her many years there; it's safe to say however that she's been one of the giants in the field, a pioneer in every sense of the word.

I remember clearly the day I overheard someone saying to my supervisor that they needed an assistant on a film project. I peered over the divider, told the small smiling woman on the other side that I was interested, and printed my resume on the spot. The next day I rode the bus up Van Ness Avenue and walked the hill to her Washington Street home where I would soon be schooled in social documentary, Asian American history, and how to butcher a chicken.