biography

I am a Korean American filmmaker and educator who uses live-action and animation techniques to create short films that explore the social conditions and realities of the human body. My films serve as inquiries about how people perceive and understand bodies (intellectually and spiritually) and are based on my personal and lived experiences of gender, race, health, and sexuality. My work exists as hybrid, chimeric fusions of animation and video, and function as ongoing searches for alchemic transformation of my own body through frame-by-frame film processes.

With a vested interest in utilizing film as a form of social critique and reflection, I pull from the fields of biology, poetry, anthropology, and history to draw connections and metaphorical relationships that question how we navigate the world and perceive its boundaries. This inquiry encompasses myriad bodies, organic and inorganic, from animal creatures to geological land masses. Past examples of this research approach include a film that examined shared sites of queerness between myself and the spotted hyena, and a video essay about the color yellow as it pertained to my racial identity and a species of yellow corvina fish.

Though my practice is largely filmic, my creative process is interdisciplinary and includes performance and writing methodologies. I have produced essays, poetry, and choreographed movements in my search to create cinematic experiences that are intimate and sensorial.

I have had the fortune of exhibiting and competing in international festivals and gallery shows including: The Ottawa International Animation Festival, the Baryshnikov Arts Center, CURRENTS New Media, The Margulies Collection, and Rooftop Films.

At heart, I am a self-professed lover of animation and an artist who creates films to offer points of connections and to share experiences. I see my art and teaching practice as opportunities for nearness and understanding between bodies; like the flickers of projected light in a dark room of friends and strangers, and an invitation to step close and share time + space, if only for a little while.

I can be contacted via e-mail at: lkimfav@gmail.com
Always happy to hear from others!