scholarly journals A Film History Which Is Being Written by the State─A Brief Review of the Korean Film History by Yeonghwa of Yeonghwajinheunggongsa in the 1970s

2019 ◽  
Vol null (63) ◽  
pp. 93-125
Author(s):  
심혜경
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
The State ◽  
Korean Film

Standing the provincial ground: Childhood and parental authority in Dangal (2016)

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akshaya Kumar
Keyword(s):  
Marketing Strategy ◽  
Film History ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
The State ◽  
Parental Authority ◽  
Robust Analysis ◽  
Full Sense ◽  
Sales Pitch

In the sales pitch for the 2016 blockbuster film Dangal, the gender question was heavily foregrounded to hail the sports biopic of a commonwealth gold medallist from rural Haryana. However, the film was also criticized for the patriarchal control of the desires of the wrestler-daughters, who gradually take cognizance of their potential. This article argues that we need to address a different trajectory to make full sense of the film, in spite of its marketing strategy. Taking its cues from sports biopics, figurations of obstinate provincial masculinity and neoliberal childhood, Dangal revisits much-maligned parental authority to foreground the question of moral resourcefulness. The state and nation in Dangal, I would argue, are decoupled from a provincial vantage point. Standing apart from generic biopics, Dangal’s heroes are in a standoff with the state’s essentially colonial character and its metropolitan kernel. Their public insubordination deserves a robust analysis of the antecedents from within film history, to reassemble Dangal’s urgent critique.

Im, Kwon-taek (1936--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Cook
Keyword(s):  
Korean War ◽  
Film History ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Korean History ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Fifth Generation ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Korean Film ◽  
New Korean Cinema ◽  
International Success

Im Kwon-taek, one of the most prominent South Korean filmmakers, helped to pave the way for the international success of the New Korean Cinema of the 1990s. He debuted in 1962 and first worked in commercial genres, reliably filling production quotas. His early work included action and Korean War films produced under military government policies that promoted anti-communist propaganda. During the 1980s Im made the transition to art films and gained international recognition. With his 1981 film Mandala, he became the first South Korean filmmaker to tour the international festival circuit. His 1993 film Sŏp’yŏnje [Sopyonje] about singers practicing the traditional pansori form of music, broke box office records in Korea. Exploring themes in Korean history and aesthetics, Im became a representative of the national cinema and his suffering heroines have been interpreted as symbols of the Korean nation. Im revisited the art of pansori in his 2000 film Ch’unhyangdyŏn (Chunhyang), a retelling of a story about love across social classes derived from the 17th-century pansori repertoire. A recurring subject in Korean film history, the story of Chunhyang had been adapted at least seventeen times. Im’s return to the subject echoed the ethnographic tendencies of China’s Fifth Generation filmmakers, whose work was similarly both national in inspiration and global in ambition.

The Beginning: Towards a Mass Entertainment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dong Hoon Kim
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Film Culture ◽  
Colonial Korea ◽  
Film Exhibition ◽  
History Of ◽  
Korean Film ◽  
Cultural Functions ◽  
Mass Entertainment ◽  
Colonial Government

This chapter examines early film culture prior to the 1920s in order to offer a detailed historical background for the book’s exploration of the major advancement of Joseon cinema since the late 1910s. The first half of the chapter critically scrutinizes socio-political and cultural conditions that influenced the formation of early film culture in pre-colonial and colonial Korea. Equal attention is given to the collective efforts of early film entrepreneurs and exhibitors in creating film exhibition sites, including movie theatres, defining social and cultural functions of theatre space for a society devoid of theatrical tradition, and cultivating film audiences. The second half traces the activities of the first film production entity of colonial Korea: the Moving Picture Unit (MPU) of the colonial government. The author’s attempt to uncover the forgotten history of the MUP ultimately reveals the problematic of Japanese and Korean film historiographies that have pushed this crucial film unit of the empire onto the margin of film history.

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