Screening accompanied by an introduction.

A promising ballerina, More gave up the dream and has been working as a drag queen artist for 20 years. One day, John Cameron Mitchell, in Seoul for a run of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, catches More’s show. Soon after More is invited to perform in New York for the 50th anniversary of Stonewall Uprising.

In this, his third documentary film, Lee Il-ha appears to have met a protagonist who fully resonates with his own style: Mo Jimin, queer drag artist who majored in ballet at art school. I Am More is as much Mo Jimin’s film as it is Lee Il-ha’s. The stage name More, or ‘Mo-uh (毛魚)’, meaning ‘hairy fish’, is also the title of Mo Jimin’s essay collection published at the beginning of this year. Lee Il-ha has consistently focused his interest on those who have been captured by the idea of ‘life as a stage’. The stage is a boxing ring (A Crybaby Boxing Club, 2014), as well as a road upon which ‘counter’-protest against peddlers of hate speech unfolds (Counters, 2017). Unbound by the conventions of documentary-based objectivity, Lee Il-ha’s style maximises the fantastical nature of the concept of ‘life as a stage’ that has captured I Am More’s protagonist.

Yoo Un-seong