Shirley Kim-Ryu

Shirley Kim-Ryu is a filmmaker and poet based in Los Angeles and Seoul.  By oscillating between genres and mediums, Shirley’s work generates an energy of the primordial, deeply rooted in improvisation, chaos, and arriving in land-based rituals and practices.

A recent poetry fellow of the VONA (Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation) workshop, the Juniper Institute for Young Writers, and the Disquiet Literary Program, Shirley holds an MFA in film direction (from UCLA) and an MFA in poetry (from California Institute of the Arts), and has been the recipient of the 2022 LEF Moving Image Fund,  the Fritt Ord Fund, the Nordisk Kulturfond OPSTART, the Vikken Fund, the Norwegian Film Institute Award, the James Bridges Award in Film Directing, the Hollywood Foreign Press Award, and the Mary Pickford Award.  Shirley’s films have been screened in international film festivals.

Shirley is a co-founder of the LA-based Solano Film Collective which creates various forms of films, including in collaborations with LA-based arts organizations like Archeffect Design, MOCA, and Clockshop.

Shirley’s Fulbright-Nehru research project involves working in kinship with the lived culture of the ritual dance theyyam in Kannur, Kerala.  In the context of an intersection between Korean and Indian indigenous spirits, she is exploring artistic inquiries and getting closer to a deeper understanding of artistic roots and their identity in multiplicity.  In this regard, she is seeking answers to questions such as: how does theyyam process the idea of gender in the language of nature; how does it function in the community to serve its members; and how has it digested the communal blues caused by colonialism, class, and patriarchy?