By Rachel Lu

(This story is made possible with the support of AARP)

Korean independent animator Hyungjin Lee’s grandfather passed away when she was only 8 years old. Now, she’s telling his story in her short film “Miss You.”

Several years after her grandfather passed, while living in the U.S., Lee was cleaning out her family’s defunct computer, when she unexpectedly discovered a taped interview with her grandfather that Lee’s sister created for a school project as a child. 

In the tape, Lee’s grandfather recounts life as a teenager during the Korean War, bringing up memories of war, tragedy, and heartbreak. For Lee, the familiar voice of her grandfather brought up a memory of sitting on her mother’s lap listening to this conversation, not being able to grapple with the gravity of the story. 

Listening back as an adult, tears began streaming down Lee’s face, and she wanted to share this story that brought her grandfather alive again with the world. That’s when Lee turned to animation for the first time, creating what would eventually become her first short film “Miss You.”

Lee views animation as a limitless medium, allowing the artist to imagine and conjure an entire world within a story. 

This capacity for imagination is especially valuable to Lee as a diasporic storyteller as she attempts to capture remembrance across generations and geographies. There is so much missed information in her grandfather’s story that Lee must fill in years later.

“I realized I want to make an animation about that incompleteness,” Lee told AsAmNews. “Not about retelling a story exactly as it happened, but from the point of view of the generations after, where you have this piece of history, but there’s so much that you don’t understand.”

It was especially important for Lee to bring vivid imagery to her grandfather’s voice, as if the artist is opening up a time capsule that brings the everyday people of historical moments into the foreground.

“When you hear about the war, you hear about the numbers and the American soldiers, like all these big chunks of information,” said Lee. “[You never hear about] someone like my grandfather, who was basically a kid in the countryside, who was not a soldier during the war and was not directly involved, but very much faced the day to day realities of what it was like to be growing up during war and be like caught in that time.”

“Miss You” was the opening film at the UNICA Korea International Film Festival and was an official selection at the Asian American International Film Festival. At these screenings, Lee recalls the first time when others resonated strongly with her film and her grandfather’s story.

One older woman asked Lee if her grandfather was from the same village as her, as she could recognize a tinge of accent in his voice. Turns out she was right, and it was a powerful moment when Lee realized her grandfather’s audio could travel and connect with people in different corners of the world within the diaspora.

Independent animations are created without the funding of commercial studios, streamers, or funding organizations. So, independent animators like Lee have the freedom and agency to tell stories that matter to their experiences and communities. As an Asian animator, Lee can tell stories without justifying their importance and relevance to other people.

In Lee’s film “My Names,” she reckons with the evolution of her name, from Elizabeth to Sarah to Erika, and eventually returning to Hyungjin, the name given by her parents. Using salt and other chemicals to distort the animation, the film portrays the shifting moments of identity that Lee was experiencing through the journey of her name.

“It was like an exercise for myself to fully come to terms with all of the story and the weight that was wrapped around this English name,” said Lee. “Kind of easing myself into this new stage of my life where I was choosing a different name to go by.”

Lee’s latest animation is a visual meditation on mental health and the desire to return to a place where one truly belongs. Still in development, “Stay With Me” is set to be released next January and will enter the film festival circuit next spring.

AsAmNews is published by the non-profit, Asian American Media Inc.

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