Essay Film Festival: Exploring the 1980s Korean Film Collectives with Kim Hong-joon

We recently had the honour of welcoming prolific film critic/writer Yoo Un-seong as part of the 2019 London Korean Film Festival documentary strand. In his lecture, Yoo mapped out the early independent filmmaking movement which centered around film collectives and cine-clubs in 1980s South Korea.

Filmmaker/programmer/academic Kim Hong-joon (a regular visitor to KCCUK with his essayistic films) was one of the central figures of this movement. So we are delighted that Kim will be back with an illustrated talk on the social, political and aesthetic contexts of these early independent films, moderated by independent film programmer Ricardo Matos Cabo . As part of the talk, we will screen two films that have never previously been shown in the UK, Seoul 7000 (1976, Kim Hong-joon & Hwang Joo-ho) and Performance Arirang (1982, Seoul Film Collective), all of which Kim Hong-joon was involved in the making of. The talk will cover his personal recollections of the period, providing insight into how these film collectives operated, as well as outlining their influences and placing them within an international context.

Essay Film Festival 2020 Prelude