In the experimental films of Jeannette Louie, perception creates identity. She follows the trail of consciousness as it streams through a greater world asking, “What am I?” As the mind reaches for autonomy and grace, expressions of longing, loving and being inhabit visionary tales that combine animation, narrative and documentary means.
Her films screen globally at Hot Docs, Florida Film Festival, Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival, LeFIFA41, Seattle Asian American Film Festival, Vancouver International Film Festival, Montclair Film Festival, Tallgrass Film Festival, Reel Sisters of Diaspora Film Festival, Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival, Bolton International Film Festival, Maryland Film Festival, CAAMFest, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, Antimatter, Aesthetica Short Film Festival, Asian Film Festival of Dallas, Peloponnisos International Documentary Festival, The Black Maria Film Festival, Imagine Science Films, STATE Experience Science Film Festival, CineGlobe at CERN, Minneapolis Underground Film Festival, Toronto Independent Film Festival, Columbus International Film Festival, Brooklyn Film Festival, XXIII Message to Man International Film Festival, Big Muddy Film Festival, Athens International Film & Video Festival, the American Psychological Association Film Festival and others.
Her work has been awarded and supported by a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Creative Capital Foundation Fellowship, a MidAtlantic Foundation Fellowship, a Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Fellowship, the Bogliasco Foundation, Gapado AIR South Korea, Willapa Bay AIR, Corporation of Yaddo, Skowhegan School, The Center for Photography at Woodstock, Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, Roswell AIR, P.S.122 Project Space Program and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop.
She has exhibited at the Exploratorium SF, Artists’ Television Access (SF), Cinesonika 3 (Northern Ireland), [.Box] at Visual Container (Milan), Platform Seoul (South Korea), Esso Gallery (NY), The Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art (NM), Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (MI), Homie (Berlin), Mills College Art Museum (CA), Spaces (OH), Alberto Peola Arte Contemporanea (Turin), The Montclair Art Museum (NJ) and The Noyes Museum (NJ).
Her celebrated scientific fable depicting Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Amygdala was awarded Best Avant-garde Film by the American Psychological Association. It magnifies the dystopic diaspora of human cognition by depicting the impact psychology has upon neurology. A neuron profoundly questions the existence of a human soul in The Land Within, which was awarded a Remi by WorldFest Houston. Animation, film and the language of science are woven into a philosophical panorama of the mind. Isle of I, filmed in residence on the island of Gapado, represents the symbiotic relationship humans have with each other and the environment. Louie’s newest release, Empire of My Melodious Mind, awarded Best Experimental Film by Reel Sisters of Diaspora,is an epic animated rumination exploring the consciousness of being an American born Asian.