#MondayMovies: Ester Song Kim
Ester Song Kim + Lavender
As your pretty basic straight cis dude, female friendship is admittedly not something I quite understand. I have my assumptions, of course; many of which lack nuance and complexity. But talking with partners and lovers past about their girlfriends, how they relate and provide support to each other, I do catch on a few patterns…a few common threads. One of which seems to be a deeper capacity for the gray in a friendship. Male friendship in my experience is often an all or nothing ordeal, we’re either good or we’re not good. We’re either brothers or dead to each other. However, from the limited experience I have, it seems that women can be many things to each other at the same time…and love can exist throughout all of that.
Ester Song Kim’s Lavender reminds me of this. She is a Korean American female filmmaker and production designer based in Los Angeles. She started working in this industry in 2012 after moving to LA with no knowledge about filmmaking, learning the trade through the art department. Around 2015 or so, she began making her own movies.
She wanted to make something experimental. Lavender was initially a short story prose as a light writing exercise (Ester majored in literature and creative writing in college). It sat in her drawer for a couple of years but she always wanted to make it into a film, and when she met actresses Tiffany Tran and Porter Duong she decided it was a perfect moment.
Where to Watch
See what films inspired her below!
Persona
“The entire film feels like a confusing nightmare but with such a beautiful dreamy quality. I also wanted to explore the idea of Tina and Patti being the same person. That Patti was prohibiting herself from living freely, while Tina was her alter ego, telling her to just be free.”
Where to Watch
mulholland drive
“More nightmare/dreamy influences that deal with relationships between women who are confounded by and codependent with each other. Female relationships are fascinating to me because there is so much space for misunderstandings and conflict because of how we've been shaped by society.”
Where to Watch
3 women
“Similar reasons to the previous two movies. I love how beautiful this movie is while the entire thing feels like a nightmare. I dream of being able to execute psychological tension how Altman does.”