Details | Available in the United States from May 21–June 6 Stream it Here: https://kffdc2021.eventive.org/welcome Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOOLcYQEM40
Korean Film Festival DC 2021—Part Two: Korea and the World The films in this section are examples of Korea’s interactions with the rest of the world, whether through the perspective of a Korean woman on a US Army base, the remake of an Italian comedy, the experience of Filipino immigrants, or a cinematic journey to the cosmopolitan Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul. This astonishing blend of fact and fantasy begins as a straightforward documentary portrait of Park In-sun, a former comfort woman who for years serviced the soldiers at the soon-to-be-demolished US Army base in Uijeungbu, Korea. But when three traditionally clad messengers from the land of the dead appear at the funeral of one of Park’s friends, the film transforms into a supernatural fable. By turning Park—who doesn’t know when she was born, and was sold into prostitution as a child by a pimp using the stolen identity of a dead woman—into a mythical figure whom the messengers call “the woman with two strong legs who never sleeps,” the filmmakers make her the hero, rather than the victim, of her life story. The film is unflinching in its portrayal of the suffering Park and her fellow comfort women endured, but it is also a surreal fantasy that honors them by linking them to Korea’s shamanistic traditions. You will never see a film quite like it. Intended for mature audiences. (Dir.: Kim Dong-ryon & Park Kyoung-tae, Korea, 2019, 115 min., DCP, Korean with English subtitles) Image courtesy of Cinema Dal |
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