Name: Elyssa Jakim
Graduation Year: 2020
Feature Track or TV Track: Feature Track
Contact Email: elyssajakim@ucla.edu

Short Bio: Elyssa was named for the Elysian fields and has an affinity for fields of flowers. Her 10+ years acting grounds her writing in character and language. Elyssa also writes articles about film, culture, wellness, and women, which have been published in MUBI Notebook, The Huffington Post, Theatre for a New Audience, Mind Body Green, and iMedia Connection. Elyssa holds a B.A. from Harvard in Environmental Studies, which she likes to call “The Study of Places and Spaces” and for which she studied fabrics and fashion in film and wrote a senior thesis (advised by Marjorie Garber) on Dressing Rooms in cinema. 

Short Artist Statement: Elyssa’s screenplays are about women in heightened worlds—films characterized by poetic language, bizarre humor, and a strong visual sense.

Logline #1: JOSEPHINE THE SINGER - Feature - In a strange, Kafka-esque underground world, where people are like mice, the last singer on earth falls in love, but it has unforeseen complications when it comes to her career and her art. 

Logline #2: FOREST GIRLS - Feature - A woman who feels unsettled in her own skin meets a community of women who help her to become who she really is. This is a film about sisters, earth, depression, and fairies in the Pacific Northwest.  

Logline #3:  THE LADY WITH THE DOG - Feature - In 1890s Russia, an unfulfilled womanizer on vacation seduces an openhearted woman who shakes up everything he has ever thought about women and about himself.

Name three movies or TV shows that inspire you: The Taste of Tea, Cleo from 5 to 7, Orphée