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Empire of My Melodious Mind film image, director Jeannette Louie

Empire of My Melodious Mind

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

Director
Cast

Rachel Lin

Credits
Country of Origin

USA

Year

2022

Language

In Chinese and English with English subtitles

Film Contact
Links
9 min

Featured in:

Ponto Final film image, director Miguel López Beraza

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.

 

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Credits

Producer

Jeannette Louie

Screenwriter

Jeannette Louie

Original Music

Gen Rubin

Director

Jeannette Louie headshot, Empire of My Melodious Mind 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.