Human consciousness asks, “What am I?” as it streams through a greater world grasping for autonomy and grace. Navigating the thresholds of longing, belonging and becoming, Jeannette Louie captures the mind’s inner life as it grapples with the fragility of being. Through a blend of animation, narrative and documentary forms, her films reveal the intimate choreography of existence.
She screens internationally 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, among many others.
She is a recipient of a Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, a Creative Capital Foundation Fellowship, a MidAtlantic Foundation Fellowship, and residencies from the 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).
Louie’s celebrated scientific fable, Amygdala, awarded by The American Psychological Association, depicts Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Land Within, awarded by Worldfest Houston, presents a neuron questioning the existence of a human soul. Empire of My Melodious Mind, awarded by Reel Sisters of Diaspora, expresses an animated bilingual rumination. Us Being Epic, releasing in 2026, chronicles the cultural and political impact of an American Chinese family, seen through the lens of photographic history.