trouble with simply loading an image into a matrix

i'm new to jitter, so i grabbed a small image with jit.desktop, put it into jit.matrix, then sent jit.matrix the message "exportimage folder/imagename". that worked and i have imagename.png inside the folder inside my project's directory.

when i try "importmovie folder/imagename.png" i get a "can't find" notification in the max window. when i try moving the image to the root project folder and just using "importmovie imagename.png" everything works fine.

how do i load images that aren't directly in the project/working path??? thanks.