Canadian Premiere
The odds and ends within a single cabinet spark an interior rumination of the self, family, and culture that form the identity of an American-born Asian woman. This experimental work uses repetitive images and animated sequences, complemented by a self-reflective narration, to build a compelling and dense montage which explores relationships between words, images, and language structures. The film is impressionistic of how we gather disparate bits of feelings and memories and somehow piece them together to make sense of them in different ways. Empire of My Melodious Mind is a wonderful example of experimental film finding new ways of experiencing and expressing our perceptions of self, meaning, and things that bind us to our past.
Community Partner
Rachel Lin
USA
2022
In Chinese and English with English subtitles
Featured in:
International Shorts: Personal Journeys
The films in this shorts program are all about discovery. Beautiful and thought-provoking voyages of internal and external discovery that honour relations and history, while encountering stimuli that promote a new understanding of self.
Missing VIFF? Check out what's playing at the VIFF Centre
Whatcha Want
Whatcha Want, a hip-hop-infused drama from award-winning Vancouverite Mina Shum (Meditation Park), sees a restless trophy wife from Hong Kong rise above her wealthy husband’s infidelity by rekindling her passion for dance.
James McNeill Whistler
One of America’s greatest artists, James McNeill Whistler fashioned his life as a work of art in its own right. James McNeill Whistler looks beyond his famous portraits and self-styled “nocturnes” to dive into the true depths of Whistler’s legacy.
Let Them Be Seen
Let Them Be Seen is an absurdist portrait of the town of Tapoleng in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, moving through churches, spaza shops, and a Jam Alley re-enactment to document a village reshaping faith and community in post-apartheid life.
Yugo Goes to America
In Yugo Goes to America, millennials from Belgrade drive a Yugo — Yugoslavia’s notoriously unreliable vehicle — from New York to Los Angeles. Their freewheeling road trip traces the car’s volatile history alongside the breakup of Yugoslavia itself.
Elephants in the Fog
In a remote Nepalese village, Pirati takes charge in the search for a missing girl belonging to her family of third-gender Kinnar women. A densely atmospheric thriller and a moving portrait of an embattled but resilient community.
Credits
Producer
Jeannette Louie
Screenwriter
Jeannette Louie
Original Music
Gen Rubin
Director
Jeannette Louie
Jeannette Louie is a Chinese American filmmaker creating cinematic tales that express the conflict of being. Rumination, speculation, and cogitation rule the minds of her protagonists as they ask, “What am I?” Known for her award-winning films, Amygdala (2013) and The Land Within (2017), her visionary films screen globally, combining animation, narrative, and documentary means.
