Ye Mimi
Directing
Biography
Ye Mimi is a Taiwanese poet and filmmaker. A graduate of the MFA Creative Writing Department at Dong Hwa University and the MFA Film Department at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is the author of three volumes of poetry and has internationally exhibited several of her poetry films. Through collaging her words and images, she improvises a new landscape trying to erase the border between poetry and image making. Book-length translations of her work are available in Dutch and English.
Known For
We experience a lot of poems as a record of real life. Through the specific Taiwanese backdrop, the poetry film illustrates a series of moments to approach the concept of time, which is not as concrete as we are taught. As a poet, the filmmaker presents her ideas on the nature of reality, existence, what is there and what is not there.
They Are There But I Am Not
From the first minute to the last, from surreal, incongruous scenes to indigenous funeral ceremonies, from fish ponds to ruins, from women to men, from a telephone to a tortoise shell, from fortune-telling to Taoist salvation rites, from color to black and white, from Ma'nene to Family Constellations, from animals to being animalized, from sorrow to tranquility … Every image performs a death, releasing a vast vitality.
CeaseSusurrating
Local junk vendors yell the phrase “Sell them to me” repeatedly as they walk from neighbourhood to neighbourhood looking for unwanted household items, typically scrap metal, tools and electronics.
Hail the Bodhisattva of Collected Junk
In the farcical exchange between the poet and the harmonic pipe, you will silently count from zero to nine. Then you will hear the chirping of insects from Borneo, the clear and pleasant sounds of the Dai Bilangdao flute, impromptu shamanic chanting and fragments of highly treasured visual relics that the poet has gleaned with her eyes during her travels.