Laurie Sumiye
Directing
Biography
Laurie Sumiye is a Hawai’i-born documentary artist and creative technologist who investigates environmental tensions between humans and nature. Her background in interactive media, animation, journalism and design uniquely informs her films, drawings and installations. She has shown her award-winning films at DOC NYC, BAMcinemaFest and DOCUTAH, and presented her art in New York, Los Angeles, Hawai’i and internationally, in the UK, South Africa and Brazil. She has a MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, BA & BS in Art and Communications from Bradley University, and studied art at Lorenzo De’ Medici in Florence and Pratt Institute.
Known For
Director Kelly Anderson's personal journey as a Brooklyn 'gentrifier' to understand the forces reshaping her neighborhood along lines of race and class. The film reframes the gentrification debate to expose the corporate actors and government policies driving displacement and neighborhood change.
My Brooklyn
The film unfolds through the POV of the Palila called Anuenue who stood as the client in 1979 court trials. The legal battle leveraged the Endangered Species Act to protect māmane forests where 2,500 Palila competed with introduced sheep & goats. He explains how they won in court, but are still in jeopardy; in 2024, only 300 Palila remain. Today, a Native Hawaiian conservationist struggles to save them amidst escalating threats of climate change, wildfires, introduced predators, diseases, and governmental neglect.
A Paradise Lost
Of Memory & Los Sures (2011) is a hybrid animated documentary film featuring oral histories of longtime residents of Los Sures, a neighborhood in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Voices of longtime residents of Los Sures, a mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood, are juxtaposed with images suggesting a recently disappearing past. The film weaves their stories, reflecting unique glimpses into collective memory of a place undergoing rapid changes. Through explorations of urban space, the film unearths fragments of history and culture, and recreates those memories through video, photography, archival documents and animation.