Playing as part of the New York Asian Film Festival, Jaime Sunwoo's short film “Handwritten” brings to life a personal musing about handwriting through black-and-white paper puppets and animation. Commissioned by Heather Henson's Handmade Puppet Dreams, the piece won Best Short Documentary at USA Film Festival and Indy Film Festival.
Handwritten is screening at New York Asian Film Festival
Narrated by the filmmaker, she recounts her own experience with learning how to write as a kid, each child's distinct handwriting emerging through repeated strokes of a pencil. The film moves through a quick contemplation on graphology, the study of handwriting, before ending on the sociohistorical legacy and impact of handwriting, which she notes has been transformed by the advent of typing and computing.
Framing handwriting as an intangible aspect of the self, “Handwritten” acts as a love letter to childhood and a video essay rolled into one, reflecting on her own ever-changing handwriting and humanity's omnipresent fixation on graphology and script as a window into the soul. Although somewhat lacking in emotional potency despite its personal touch, the work could very well be shown to a younger audience to great effect, especially with its narrative clarity and engaging visuals. The non-narrative story is clearly complemented by the film's art style, which is also fittingly, hand-drawn (and handwritten) in a way that betrays a certain poetic nature.
Sunwoo, a Korean American artist and handmade puppeteer, also wrote, directed, and animated “Equality Tea,” which similarly won Best Short Documentary at DisOrient Film Festival. Her cinematic style demonstrates how pen-and-paper drawings can be turned into puppets, characters, and sets for animation, conveying with ease a simple story suitable for all ages. Her myriad handwriting styles, a highlight of the storyline, can also be seen in the film's various art styles, a creative patchwork of drawings, letters, cutouts, and other pieces of paper craftsmanship.
Clocking in at just under nine minutes, “Handwritten” is a charming short flick that details Sunwoo's connection to her own fickle penmanship, a curious aspect of herself that she's never been able to fully grasp. As she meditates on the impact of handwriting in her own life, throughout history, and projected into the future, she provides the viewer with a straightforward yet effective prism into the mundane.
