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
FernGully: The Last Rainforest
VIFF Kids Club is our monthly family series with films, crafts and more! Doors at 11 am for activities, film at 12. FernGully is a magical adventure where fairy Crysta and her friends seek to protect their rainforest home.
Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other
This intimate and candid film by a younger husband and wife artist team is a delicate and immensely moving dual portrait of two artists, husband and wife, together and apart, at that point in life when the end casts a shadow over even the sunniest day.
Image: © Manon et Jacob and Final Cut For Real
Agatha's Almanac
Shot over six years on vibrant 16mm film, Agatha’s Almanac is an artful documentary portrait of filmmaker Amalie Atkin’s octogenarian aunt, who has fashioned herself an endearingly simple and self-sustaining lifestyle on her Manitoba farm.
Blue Road - The Edna O'Brien Story
Judging by this candid, funny, passionate biographical documentary, it would have been a wild ride to have been Irish novelist Edna O'Brien, or even to have been in her circle of friends and lovers. Well, for an hour and a half we can pretend we were.
The Art of Adventure
The unbelievable adventure story of how painter Robert Bateman and ecologist Bristol Foster drove a Land Rover from Africa to Australia in 1957, developing a love of nature to last a lifetime. An inspirational love letter to the adventure of life itself.
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.