Women’s Oral Histories

This programme brings together two films that speak from vastly different moments in Korea’s feminist and queer history yet are bound by a shared insistence: to speak, to witness, and to survive.

In Lesbian Censorship in School 1 (2005), director Lee Young offers a raw, first-person account of teenage queerness and institutional repression. Told through the camcorder of Chun-Jae, a young lesbian student, the film unfolds as a diaristic portrait of survival and resistance.

In contrast, The Witches’ Carnival (2024) moves outward—geographically, temporally, collectively. Park Ji-sun constructs a layered portrait of feminist resistance in Busan, weaving women’s voices across generations into a living archive. Her camera becomes a conduit for memory, returning to sites of protest and remembrance—not to memorialise, but to energise. Resisting linearity, the film gathers stories like spells, transforming historical documentation into a communal, defiant, and deeply alive form.

Both works challenge the viewer not only to witness oppression but to consider the politics of visibility itself. Who gets to be seen? Who gets to speak? And what does it cost? Whether through the lens of a teenage girl’s camcorder or the collective voices of feminist struggle, these films mark the space where silence is broken and speaking becomes an act of resistance.

This is not a history curated from above. It is a history forged in bedrooms and backstreets, classrooms and picket lines. A history told not because it was safe but because it was necessary.

• Lesbian Censorship in School 1
  이반검열 1
  Directed by Lee Young
  27 min | 2005 | Korea | Colour | Korean with English subtitles
  
  Copy Source: WOMDOCS
  
  Chun-jae, a teenage lesbian, suffers daily at school because of her sexual identity. Teachers isolate her from her friends, force her to deny who she is, and threaten to out her to her parents. In this prison-like environment, her camera becomes her only true companion. Through her video diary, Chun-jae candidly expresses her despair, anger, and pride as a lesbian. Told through the footage she records herself, this film captures the courage and growth of a young girl who fights to hold onto her true self, even in the face of relentless oppression.
  
  Lee Young is a filmmaker who founded the documentary filmmaking group WOM. She is known for her exploration of queer identity and marginalisation.
• The Witches’ Carnival
  마녀들의 카니발
  Directed by Park Ji-sun
  81 min | 2024 | Korea | Colour | Korean with English subtitles | UK Premiere
  
  Copy Source: CINESOPA
  
  In 1988, workers at the ‘House of Female Labourers in Busan’ studied the Labour Standards Act, received overdue salaries, and took menstrual leave and prenatal leave. As the subdivided women’s movement develops, Busan women also take to the streets to fight against domestic violence and sexual violence. Around the same time, female students in Busan and South Gyeongsang Province actively campaigned to create school rules to regulate sexual violence in universities. In 2000, Pusan ​​National University’s first feminist festival, ‘Witches’ Carnival’ was held, followed by webzine ‘Woljang’ and female magazine ‘Herstory’. In the wake of the 2016 Gangnam Station misogyny murder case, young people in their teens and 20s who participated in the ‘Busan Sexist Sexual Violence End Action’ declared #MeToo and shouted for survival. The memories and lives of Busan women who resist patriarchy intersect in the space of Busan.
  
  Park Ji-sun is a documentary filmmaker focusing on women’s histories, social movements, and grassroots feminism in Korea.