Programme Link

주영한국문화원은 한국영화시즌 연계행사의 원활한 진행을 위해 아래와 같이 전문인력을 모집합니다

1.주요업무

○ 상영작 선재물 확보 및 관리

○ 상영회 기간 중 상영회 및 행사 운영 전반 관리

○ 초청게스트 전체 일정 구성 및 관리

○ 초청게스트 입출국 및 부대행사 시 수행 업무

○ 각종 부대 행사 준비 및 진행 협조

○ 상영회 진행 지원

○ 기타 상영회와 관련하여 필요한 제반 업무 지원

2. 응모자격

○ 영국 체류 자격에 문제가 없는 자 (관광비자 등 일을 할 수 없는 비자 제외, 별도 비자 발급 지원 불가)

○ 영어 및 한국어에 모두 능통한 자

○ 영화제, 영화 배급사 및 영화/문화 행사 등 관련 분야 경력자 우대

○ 영화 이론 및 실기 전공자 우대

○ MS 오피스 (워드, 엑셀) 사용 필수, 어도비 디자인 (포토샵, 인디자인) 및 프로젝트 관리 프로그램 사용 가능자 우대

3. 제출서류

○ 자기소개서, 이력서 (자유 양식) 국문 1부 및 영문 1부 (총 2부)

○ 자격요건에 부합하는 자격증, 경력증명서 사본 등 제출 가능

4. 전형절차

○ 서류전형 ￫ 면접전형 ￫ 최종합격

5. 근무기간 및 시간

○ 근무 기간: 2024년 8월 26일~11월 29일

○ 근무 시간: 주 2일 (8월 26일~11월 1일, 11월 18일~29일), 주 5일(11월 4일~11월 15일)

※ 행사 일정에 따라 필요시 야간 및 주말 근무

※ 첫 2주는 수습시간으로, 수습기간 후 평가를 통해 정식 채용이 확정됨.

6. 보수

○ 시급 £11.5 ~ £13.15 (문화원 규정 및 지원자 경력에 따라 책정)

7. 접수처

○ 이메일 지원 (info@kccuk.org.uk)

○ 접수 시 이메일 제목 란에 ‘한국영화시즌 연계행사 전문인력 지원’을 명시하기 바람

8. 서류 접수기한

○ 2024년 8월 19일(월)

9. 기타 참고사항

○ 서류 심사 통과자에 한해 개별 면접을 2024년 8월 21일 혹은 8월 22일에 실시

○ 서류 통과 여부, 구체 면접 일정, 최종합격여부는 해당자에게만 개별 통보

○ 제출 서류는 반환하지 않으며, 기재내용이 사실과 다른 경우 채용을 취소할 수 있음

주영한국문화원

Korean Cultural Centre UK

Please read the following job description and candidate specification carefully, telling us in your cover letter what brought you to apply for this role, and with what kind of professional skills you can contribute to the film festival.

Please submit your application (cover letter and CV) via email. Your cover letter should outline why you are interested in the role, as well as the skills and experience. The closing date for applications is 19 August 2024.

Once applications have been processed, selected candidates will be invited to attend an interview on either 21 or 22 August 2024.

For further information on the role please contact info@kccuk.org.uk.

We look forward to receiving your application.

(1) Terms and Conditions

• Employer: Korean Cultural Centre UK
• Salary: 11.15GBP-13.15GBP per hour (based on KCCUK regulations and candidate experience)
• Term: 9 September – 29 November 2024. (Period of work is flexible, based on festivals needs) The position is offered on a temporary basis, it is a part-time post, covering the period in preparation, build up, operation and debrief of the Korea Season Screening Event
• Hours: 16 hours (2 days) per week in 9 September-18 October, 40 hours (5days) per week in 21 October -19 November. This will involve some weekend and evening work, and hours can be flexible to accommodate this
• Notice Period: There is a 2-week probationary period, and if successful the candidate will be confirmed. Upon confirmation, either party will provide 2-weeks’ notice should they wish to terminate the agreement prior to the end of the contract
• Right to work: The successful applicant will be required to provide documentation that proves their right to work in the UK
• References: Offers of employment are subject to the receipt of two references
• Application: To apply for this position, send your CV and cover letter to info@kccuk.org.uk with ‘Korea Season 2024 Marketing Coordinator’ in the subject line by 19 August
• Interview period: 21 or 22 August 2024
• Start date: 9 September 2024

(2) Job Description

The Marketing Co-ordinator is a core member of the festival team. The successful applicant will be creative and insightful, showing the ability to present both in-depth promotional content and fresh ideas that link Korean cinema with film culture in the UK.

(3) Responsibilities and Accountabilities

• To support the Festival Director to develop an overall strategy with regards to print distribution and offline promotion, and to ensure Korea Season screenings 2024 attracts large audiences.
• Managing and creating content for online platforms – e.g. the social media accounts, website
• To oversee the distribution of print marketing including ordering, payment and effective distribution of printed materials
• To design and deliver online campaign strategies for the festival including strand-specific e-newsletters, social media, festival & venue websites.
• To manage festival volunteers for the distribution of materials and other marketing tasks.
• To communicate regularly with a PR agency to build relationships with press lists and journalists, ensuring they are informed about upcoming films and events at Korea Season screenings.
• To identify and consider potential opportunities for cross-promotion and advertising with relevant external partners.
• To collaborate on all areas of marketing for the successful promotion of the festival, offering constructive, creative ideas to help generate ticket sales.
• General marketing and communications support, and any other duties relevant to the post as required by the festival team.

(4) Personal Specification

• At least three years’ experience of working in a film festival or similar cultural event in a marketing and/or press officer role
• Understanding of various screening formats, experience handling audio-visual content
• Experience working to budget on large scale cultural projects and working with multiple external agencies and partners
• Excellent organisational skills with the ability to prioritise and to manage and meet changing deadlines
• Excellent attention to detail and confidentiality
• Good IT skills including MS Office, skilled in Excel
• Demonstrable commitment to the principles of diversity and inclusion and its practical application and integration in the work environment
• Ability to work flexible hours (there is a requirement to work outside contracted hours, including some evenings and weekends)
• Well-organised and effective at prioritising work and managing deadlines under pressure.
• Excellent communication skills, both written and oral.

Born in the Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, Park Soo-nam is a second-generation Korean-Japanese. She first gained fame as a bestselling author with her book Crime, Death and Love (1963), which comprises two collections of correspondence between herself and Lee Jin-woo, a Korean-Japanese death row inmate who allegedly murdered two Komatsugawa High School girls in 1958—an incident most known internationally through Ōshima Nagisa’s film Death by Hanging 絞死刑 (1968). 

In 1985, she shifted from writing to filmmaking with her debut as a documentary filmmaker on The Other Hiroshima. This was followed by Korean A-bomb Victims Tell Their Story, Song of Ariran – Voices from Okinawa (1991), Nuchigafu – Life is a Treasure “Gyokusai” Stories in the Battle of Okinawa (2012), and The Silence (2017). Park Maeui scavenges durations of silence from 50 hours of footage captured by her mother over her 30-year long filmmaking career; a personal film archive thus became an invaluable reservoir of historical testimonies.

“I thought video was the only way to capture their trembling words and bodies, as language couldn’t convey such profound silence (Voices of the Silenced, 2023, 46:47).”

This is what Park Soo-nam told the camera when she was asked why she first started making films—it was to capture the silence that evaded the pen. The register of non-utterance, including the countenance, the gesture, and the wordless flow of unfilled time conveys the lived experiences that cannot be reduced to speech—especially for those whose mother tongue is stripped away from them. Language becomes a weapon of subjugation, communication turns into a battlefield, and to speak is to be complicit in the reenactment of violence. Trinh T. Minh-ha effectively underscores the language of silence in her writings about voyages across continents and languages:

“In other words, silence not as opposed to language, but as a choice not to verbalise, a will not to say, a necessary interval in an interaction—in brief, as a means of communication of its own (elsewhere, within here, 2011).”

We listen to the voices of the silenced.

Eleanor Lu, programmer

Film is a powerful form of expression; a voice that takes many forms but is at its most powerful when spoken from the heart. “Ma-eum” can mean both heart and mind, symbolising the inseparable bond between reason and emotion.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha describes Ma-eum as a true spirit, an inherent part of a person’s soul that remains unshaken by displacement or oppression. It resides in memory and is present in every word we speak.

We have curated a selection of films that use documentary cinema as a tool to express unique voices, preserve memory against the tide of forgetting, and maintain identity in the face of colonialism and modernisation. 

Our artists express themselves through imagery, speech, action, and song, whether collectively or individually, personally or publicly, intimately or boldly. They speak from the Ma-eum, the spirit-heart. 

Many of our films are screening in the UK for the first time. Our programme includes shorts, artist films, features, and audiovisual works that explore historical events in both documentary and essayistic approaches. We aim to present a chorus of voices that demonstrate cinema’s unique ability to turn the specific into the universal. Experience the resonant power of Ma-eum; a symphony of spirits and memories.

Programmed by Birkbeck, University of London, Film Programming and Curating MA Students:
Cheryl Ho
Eleanor Lu
Najrin Islam
Paul Salt
Zhiyin Du
Mentored by Ricardo Matos Cabo

It is the mark. The mark of belonging. Mark of cause. Mark of retrieval. By birth. By death. By blood. You carry the mark in your chest, in your MAH-UHM, in your MAH-UHM, in your spirit-heart.

You sing.

– Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee, 1982

The Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) was originally founded in 1984 in a small classroom inside the Korean Motion Picture Promotion Corporation, predecessor to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC). This has allowed it to flourish in a location very close to the Korean film industry, and for 40 years it has served as an educational venue for discovering and amplifying the Korean film landscape’s future potential. It is a place where the masters of modern Korean film found their beginnings, and where new talent is able to take charge of the future.

The Korean Academy of Film Arts is a national-level film education institute that has the special purpose of advocating for the training of film industry professionals. There was a time when the traditional process of becoming a director in the Korean film industry involved an apprenticeship system under which members of a specific director’s direction team would work as an assistant in order to gain experience. 

However, after the 1980s, the industry underwent radical changes as large numbers of exchange students returned from overseas film schools and kick-started a movement towards independent films created outside the system of popular media. This upheaval also prompted the emergence of private film education institutions independent of universities’ film departments, short film festivals, and private video technology that enabled the screening of copied videos. New directors and new film styles began to emerge in earnest, deviating from the traditional apprenticeship system and instead building on a foundation of various forms of human composition and diverse film cultures. KAFA, established in this trend, has created a different, alternative education opportunity situated somewhere between the film industry and an educational institution. It has made remarkable achievements by accommodating both non-majors who want to take their first shot at filmmaking and more experienced members of the industry who are interested in developing their own directorial styles. 

Above all, KAFA has been the starting point both for those directors who led the heyday of Korean films since the 1990s, such as Bong Joon-ho, Hur Jin-ho, Jang Joon-hwan, Min Kyu-dong, and Kim Tae-yong, as well as those who have led the generational shift of contemporary Korean films, such as Jo Sung-hee, Um Tae-hwa, and Huh Jung. Since its establishment, KAFA has steadily introduced dozens of high quality short and feature-length films every year, positioning itself as the birthplace of fresh talent in the Korean film industry.

To celebrate the 40th anniversary since KAFA’s founding, the London Korean Film Festival will introduce 4 feature films and 11 short films. These films have been positively received among KAFA works, and can act as a gauge for the beginnings of the directors and actors who are at the forefront of the Korean film industry.

Um Tae-hwa, whose 2023 film Concrete Utopia enjoyed critical success, made his debut in 2013 with the film  INGtoogi: The Battle of Internet Trolls. Also released in 2013 was director Kim Jung-hoon’s feature film Tinker Ticker. These two films both work that offer sharp insights into the nature of humankind, society, and the cultural Zeitgeist. 

Director Han Ka-ram’s Our Body is a work that highlights the presence of the female directors who have been shifting the Korean film landscape in recent years, as well as demonstrating the director’s unique personality in its focus on the idea of the “body” itself.

Mother Land, a stop-motion animated film by director Park Jae-beom, was painstakingly completed over the course of many years. The film illustrates the director’s deep affection for and dedication to the art of stop-motion, which is exceptionally uncommon in Korea, and also acts as an indication of the broad spectrum of talent emerging from KAFA programmes.

The festival also features 11 carefully selected short films, including: Container, a film from the sharp mind of director Kim Se-in, who received critical acclaim for her 2022 film The Apartment with Two Women; Don’t Step Out of the House, by director Jo Sung-hee, the director behind the 2021 sci-fi hit Space Sweepers; and director Jung Yu-mi’s film My Small Doll House, which has been widely praised by the animation world. 

All in all, these films represent the past 40 years of the Korean Academy of Film Arts, and through them, audiences will be able to experience all the contemporary emotions and concerns of the Korean film industry. 

Mo Eunyoung

Programmer for Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival

KOREA SEASON – DISABILITY IN KOREAN CINEMA

All around the world, the spectrum of film themes and film forms that portray impairments continues to expand. Disabled actors are increasingly being cast in roles as disabled characters, and we are also seeing growing diversity in the types of impairments portrayed in these films and stories. In the 2022 film The Blind Man Who Did Not Want to See Titanic, for example, scenes that show the blind lead, Jakko, are filmed in focus, while scenes that show the world around him are mostly a blur. The 2021 film CODA (an abbreviation that stands for “Child of Deaf Adults”), which tells the story of a hearing daughter to two d/Deaf parents, made headlines when d/Deaf actor Troy Kotsur won the 73rd Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as father Frank Rossi. 

However, in the case of Korean films, it is still extremely rare for Disabled characters to be portrayed by Disabled actors. A notable exception is Disabled actor and painter Jung Eunhye, who played Young-hui, an artist with Down syndrome, in the 2022 television series Our Blues. In a majority of cases, though, theatrical films about disability treat the characters’ impairments as little more than symbols of hardship or simple plot devices. 

At this year’s Korea Season, we will introduce four films that address the theme of disability. These two fiction films and two documentaries are works that each ask, in their own way, for the audience to engage with the idea of disability more deeply.

Innocent Witness tells the story of Ji-woo, an autistic teenage girl, as she stands witness in a murder trial. The script was written by Moon Ji-won, the writer behind last year’s world-famous drama Extraordinary Attorney Woo, and bears some similarities, in that it deals with both autism spectrum disorder and the legal system–in fact, Innocent Witness could be considered a prequel to the story of Extraordinary Attorney Woo. ( Moon Ji-won stated in an interview that when she was asked to write the script for Extraordinary Attorney Woo, she approached it as if she were writing the story of Ji-woo, the lead of Innocent Witness, growing up and becoming a lawyer.) In the film, Ji-woo states that although her dream is to become a lawyer, that may never become her reality–however, she can become a witness instead. However, her suitability in the role of “witness” is rooted in a debate over her trustworthiness, which is inevitably linked to prejudice against Disabled people. The film effectively links themes of trust, solidarity, prejudice, and understanding with the reality of being disabled in today’s society. 

Corydoras seeks to expand on these themes by documenting the odyssey of Park Dong-soo, a disabled man with cerebral palsy who left his facility ten years ago and has been living independently ever since. Park’s story is one of resilience and determination, as he has overcome many challenges to build a life for himself outside of the institution. The documentary explores Park’s memories of the care home and his doubts about freedom, while also celebrating his achievements and his unwavering spirit.

Nocturne is another documentary film that connects disability with the realms of family history and art. The film delves into the psychology of a family who continues to fall out and reconcile. It shows the younger son’s observations of his mother, who tries to support her older son’s disability by encouraging his art, and his cold realisation of the deep emotional rift that exists in the family.

Finally, My Lovely Angel tells the story of a man who finds new meaning in his life as he learns to communicate with a child who has audiovisual impairments, which are still not widely known or understood. The film focuses on the way the two characters communicate, and shows the way their communication creates an almost utopian world between them. Despite the dramatic setting, delicate performances by the two lead actors makes the audience believe in the power of intentional communication.

Choi Eun Young

Programmer for Persons with Disabilities Film Festival in Korea

KOREA SEASON – INDIE TALENT

Korean independent filmmakers continue to turn out an impressive number of new features every year, despite a lingering downturn at Korea’s box office and cuts to public funding. With surprising regularity, large numbers of talented new directors emerge and make names for themselves each year. The Indie Talent strand is devoted to highlighting such new voices, as well as the works of established directors who are pushing themselves in new directions.

Independent cinema is an important complement to the mainstream industry because it provides space for different approaches to storytelling and characterization. This can be seen in the assortment of characters who appear in the four films chosen for this section. One of the “rules” that screenwriters working in the mainstream industry are expected to follow is that main characters generally must be likeable, dynamic and exude a positive energy. There’s perhaps nothing wrong with this in itself, but the end result is that protagonists all tend to fall within the same set of familiar, recognised types.

The heroes of independent films tend to be more like us: lacking confidence, susceptible to mood swings and exhibiting a messy blend of positive and negative traits. The decisions they take can sometimes be frustrating to viewers, but in the end, it is often their weaknesses that make them appealing. Take for example the character of Seol-hee in director Lee Kwang-kuk’s A Wing and a Prayer. In the very opening scene, she’s grilled in a job interview about her dreams and ambitions for the future, and she answers quite honestly that she has none. Her roommate Hwa-jeong is frustrated to no end at her lack of initiative, but we come to see Seol-hee in a different light when she encounters someone who needs her help. Indecisive, directionless heroes are hard to find in mainstream cinema, but Seol-hee emerges as a memorable and fully three-dimensional character nonetheless.

Jisu, the protagonist of director Shim Hye-Jung’s Flowers of Mold, gives an alarming impression when we first see her. Her habit of rifling through trash to discover secrets about her neighbours seems unhinged, not to mention morally problematic. Despite this, there’s something fascinating about the contradictions in her personality and the way she goes about her daily life. Gradually, the film gives us greater access into her mind and heart to help us understand her actions. 

Director Lee Jeong-hong’s A Wild Roomer is very much about ordinary, flawed, contradictory human beings. The protagonist Gi-hong is no exception, being an interesting conversationalist but slightly lazy and prone to making gaffes. In place of a clearly structured plot, A Wild Roomer focuses instead on his various encounters with a range of similarly eccentric people. 

Finally, A Letter from Kyoto delves into all the complicated tension, affection and misunderstanding that can exist among three grown sisters and their mother. This work fits into the category of films whose characters feel more real than fiction, in part because director Kim Min-ju never strives unnaturally to make the characters likeable. If we do end up liking them after all, it’s because we recognise so much of ourselves in their struggles.   

Darcy Paquet