Experimental Documentary
10:27 mins, HD, Color, Sound, 2019
Written & directed by Jeannette Louie
Narrator-Daughter: Tula Simon
Music: Seth Simon
Sound: Alex Thompson
VO production: Hunter Berk
Made in Cooperation with Gapado AIR Hyundai Card and the Community of Gapado, South Korea
What happens when someone you love disappears to a far away place? Consciousness infuses a remote island in "Isle of I". The ocean, clouds, and wind form the atmosphere of human thought in an isolated realm. A mother has left a teenager behind to exist in this world which she shares through iPhone images. A symbiotic consciousness is formed as the film depicts a sojourn through dimensional space and time.
Director’s Statement
I had to say goodbye to someone a year ago. It wasn’t voluntary and this individual’s departure was sudden, unexpected, perhaps desired, but there was no forewarning or time for preparation. This person exited my present prompting me to linger in a state of perpetual timelessness where I passed through realms of memory and places only streams-of-consciousness venture into after someone passes away. I hovered somewhere between coming and going while the rest of the world progressed on towards the future. Shortly afterwards, I too was summoned away from my daily life in the U.S. to a remote island located at the southern tip of South Korea. I had to leave my daughter behind who experienced the pang of separation in a unique manner that only teenagers often envision. I thought of all these parallels while streaming through so many landscapes. Is this what death is, I thought, as I moved through a recessive series of places and atmospheres that I believed would never end? The landscape of consciousness is what makes us indelibly human and in symbiotic connection to the universe. Isle of I documents this fragile relationship of an ethereal bond.
2020 Her Side of Me, One O One Plus Gallery, Seoul, South Korea
2019 Blow-Up International Arthouse Filmfest, Chicago, IL, USA
2019 Aesthetica Short Film Festival, York, United Kingdom
2019 18th Asian Film Festival of Dallas, TX, USA
2019 Far South Movement, Gapado AIR Gallery, South Korea