Bitter, Sweet, Seoul
고진감래

  • Runtime

    63 mins

  • Cert

    TBC

Bitter, Sweet, Seoul, a crowd sourced
film is a strange yet wonderful documentary sponsored by the local Seoul
government and helmed by brothers Park Chan-wook and Park Chan-kyong. Through the Seoul, Our Movie
campaign, over a 11,000 submissions
from around the world were entered
with the Park Brothers short listing and
editing only 141 clips. Together these
help to make a document which shows
Korea’s capital, warts and all. The footage is as varied and dynamic as the city
with some clips shot to professional
standards to others captured through
phones and other devices.

Though a daunting task to begin
with Park Chan-kyong describes the
work as being “worth it, particularly when we
found a video that had an image we had been looking for. It felt as if we had discovered a jewel”. Set to the music of both traditional Korean music and
contemporary pop, Bitter, Sweet, Seoul highlights the everyman that inhabit the 2014
city, be it the Halloween mask seller in Itaewon to a woman opening a cafe to
an old woman who collects recyclables off of the street, everyone is represented. Realism is what the filmmakers
and campaign set out to capture as the
Seoul Mayor, Park Won-soon mentions
during the films premiere; ”Seoul has
a sad history. If we try to project only
the good side, it’s not the real thing….
Seoul is not a place in monotone; It has
so many different colours”. If you would
like to find out what the real Seoul is all
about then this is the film for you.