Korean film: history, resistance, and democratic imagination

2003 ◽  
Vol 41 (04) ◽  
pp. 41-2071-41-2071
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
Korean Film

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.

Screening Statues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Jacobs ◽  
Susan Felleman ◽  
Vito Adriaensens ◽  
Lisa Colpaert
Keyword(s):  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Interdisciplinary Approach ◽  
Film History ◽  
Two Dimensional ◽  
Artistic Practice ◽  
Experimental Art ◽  
Broad Scope ◽  
Art Practices ◽  
Extensive Reference

Sculpture is an artistic practice that involves material, three-dimensional, and generally static objects, whereas cinema produces immaterial, two-dimensional, kinetic images. These differences are the basis for a range of magical, mystical and phenomenological interactions between the two media. Sculptures are literally brought to life on the silver screen, while living people are turned into, or trapped inside, statuary. Sculpture motivates cinematic movement and film makes manifest the durational properties of sculptural space. This book will examine key sculptural motifs and cinematic sculpture in film history through seven chapters and an extensive reference gallery, dealing with the transformation skills of "cinemagician" Georges Méliès, the experimental art documentaries of Carl Theodor Dreyer and Henri Alekan, the statuary metaphors of modernist cinema, the mythological living statues of the peplum genre, and contemporary art practices in which film—as material and apparatus—is used as sculptural medium. The book’s broad scope and interdisciplinary approach is sure to interest scholars, amateurs and students alike.

Re-imagining German Film History

2001 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Nowell-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Film History ◽  
German Film
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