Un par de dias en la vida de Julie Ozama
A Couple of Days in the Life of Julie Ozama
1992 / Remastered 2024
Synopsis:
Image Within an Image : Story Within a Story. In this work, representing the mystery and solitude of human existence, the constantly transforming set is our main character. Night and day cycle out the window but life inside remains much the same. Is Julie Ozama trapped in her identity or is her isolation a choice she has readily accepted?
Credits:
Alette Simmons-Jiménez: Writer, Director, Exec. Producer, Set Design, Animation, Costume & Make-up.
Victoria Kluge: as Julie Ozama / Producer
Humberto (Che) Castellanos: Director of Photography
Ramon Moya: Assistant Camera
Isidro Bobadilla, Manuel Tejada, David Amengod: Music
Maximo Jose Rodriguez: Consultant
Puro Moreno Concepcion: Editor
Daniel De Jesus Castillo: Assistant Editor
Alejandro Hernandez, Antonio Damian: Grips
Jacinto Reyes: Lighting Technician
Awards:
1st Prize Video: XVIII Bienal de Arte Moderno, Santo Domingo, Republica Dominicana 1992
Special Selection: III International Short Films Festival, Asunción, Paraguay 1992
Official Selection: Louisville Film & Video Festival 1993
Official Selection: Arts Festival of Atlanta 1994
Official Selection: Maryland Public Television Independent Eye. 2000
Screenings:
El tiempo de todavía. Apuntes desde las artes visuales en el Caribe. 1984 – 2003, Centro León, cur: Sara Hermann, Santiago, Rep, Dom. 2024
Centro Cultura Babeque, Introduction to Video Art curator: Alanna Lockward, Santo Domingo, DR 2017
Monitoring Art, O Cinema, Callix Gustav Gallery, curator: Vivian Marthell, Miami, FL 2009
Off Loop, Casa America Catalunya, Loop’08 Video Festival, curator: Alanna Lockward, Barcelona, Spain, 2008
E. Leon Jimenez Cultural Center curator: Alanna Lockward, Santiago, Dominican Republic 2008
New Art as Universal Language Art & Cultural Center, curator: Mariavelia Savino, Hollywood, FL 2006
Women in Ritual Miami-Dade Parks, The Women’s Park, Miami, FL 2004
Women/Singular The Deering Estate, Miami-Dade Div. of Arts & Culture, Miami, FL 2004
New Media Lounge Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, curator: Michael Rush, Lake Worth, FL 2001
Panoptic Mind: Untitled, Eyedrum Gallery of Art and Music, Atlanta, GA 2001
Independent Eye 2000, Maryland Public Television, MD 2000
Art Festival of Atlanta Atlanta, GA 1994
Artswatch Louisville Film Festival, Louisville, KY 1993
Media Night Art Center South Florida, Miami Beach, FL 1993
III Int. Short Films Festival Paraguayan Japanese Cultural Center, Asuncion, Paraguay 1992
XVIII Biennial of Visual Arts Museo de Arte Moderno, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic 1992
IN THE PRESS:
Jean-Louis Jorge-Producer, Film & Television - Juror Bienal Nacional, Santo Domingo, R.D. 1992 - Juror Statement: The work "A Couple of Days in the Life of Julie Ozama" is a visual exploration realized via a dialogue of the formal elements of video. The constantly transforming set is a dramatic character as important as Julie Ozama, the woman-object. The mysterious illumination creates an atmosphere charged with expectations. The editing is full of surprising yet harmonious transitions using the technique of animation as a pictorial element. This video is a mirror unto itself, possessing undisputable brilliance.
Alfredo Triff- Professor University of Miami Art Department, Assistant Professor of Philosophy-Humanities at M-DC Wolfson. The Art of Alette Simmons-Jiménez and the Reason for Being: Simmons-Jiménez takes us to a wonderfully magical city, drawn perhaps from the pen of García Márquez. A Couple of Days in the Life of Julie Ozama was the first video by Simmons-Jiménez. Through vie the artist expresses a feminine subjectivity that is both hermetic and contemplative. One breathes an internal time of hide-tide. The primitive music evokes and radiates a peculiar relationship between the images that follow one after the other, and one inside the other, in an esthetic game of mise-en-abyme.
Alana Lockward-Author, curator, and filmmaker Towards A Utopian Archeology : Moving-image, decolonization and continuities in Haiti, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Alette Simmons-Jiménez won, in 1992, one of the prizes of the XVIII Bienal Nacional de Artes Visuales with the first video-art installation ever realized in the Dominican Republic A A couple of days in the life of Julie Ozama (1992) has a Spanglish echo, a Dominican one in this case. Simmons-Jiménez, an American married to a Dominican citizen, lived for almost two decades in Santo Domingo and currently directs an alternative artist’s space in Miami. With this title the artist plays with her doubled alterity, transgressing the traditional route travelled by the ones who need a visa to access the promised hegemonic mainstream.
Mery Sánchez Mulet- Arts Writer – El Siglo, Santo Domingo Alette Simmons-Jiménez the Triumph of a New Filmmaker Alette Simmons-Jiménez rightfully uses her talents as a painter. A great part of the landscapes that come about on the other side of the window were painted by her and later animated by video technology. “A Couple of Days in the Life of Julie Ozama” presents with painful clarity the terrible loneliness and isolation that human beings are sometimes subjected to in this time of debauchery and overwhelming routine. Alette Simmons-Jiménez, by way of her winning video, becomes a narrator of the sentiments and the fears that seize this epoch. With this work she has enriched her artistic curriculum. Simmons-Jiménez shows her versatility, and with one more title, she solidifies the chain of group and solo exhibitions that make up her work in the world of visual arts.
Steve Murray-Staff Writer - Atlanta Journal and Constitution: Video: Smorgasbord cinema, Films touch on it all (Special Section). Cultural identity provides the core for several other titles – for viewers who like their videos dripping with art-school obfuscations, consider he handful of experimental works, including Alette Simmons-Jimenez’s “A Couple of Days in the Life of Julie Ozama…
Sara Hermann-Cheif Curator, Centro Cultural Eduardo León Jimenes, Santiago, República Dominicana, Re: Exposición El tiempo de todavía. Apuntes desde las artes visuales en el Caribe. 1984 – 2003. El video es una obra sobresaliente de este período y paradigmática para lo que queremos comunicar.