This selection focuses on one of the driving forces of documentary filmmaking, the urge to document and preserve stories. By making films about these subjects, filmmakers give significance to the narratives they must tell, and share them with the world through a medium that only serves to foster ideas around the building of truth. The memories revealed in this programme are often fragmentary and episodic. Their patient unfolding is often shown through ordinary people going about their lives, as they recount their tales. The contrast between current daily life and their own memories contextualises the life stories and inserts them into Korea’s recent history.

Beginning the journey at Birkbeck Cinema, we will be presenting Under Construction (Jang Yun-mi, 2018) a piece that follows the routine of construction worker Sudeok that gradually plunges into the physical, emotional and mental impact of his forty-year career. As the filmmaker-subject relationship soon reveals itself to also be a daughter-father one, so the narrative progresses from an open exploration to an intimate portrait.

This leads us into the core section of this season, formed by Halmoni (Daniel Kim, 2017), Soup and Ideology (Yang Yonghi, 2021) and With or Without You (Park Hyuck-jee, 2015), which closes in on a personal level of lived experiences. These three films, screened at the Korean Cultural Centre, will focus on the legacies, loves and losses of elder women through the sharing of their memories with the filmmakers.

In an exploration of family ties, their lived trials and joys, the collective and the individual run parallel to each other to create a series focused on how the memories of a few contribute to the stories of many. In both Halmoni and Soup and Ideology, a further level of closeness is added due to the personal ties of the filmmaker to their subject, giving the audience even more of an insight into their lives than they otherwise would have been shown.

Following these films, With or Without You is more observant, showing us the strength of the bond between two women living together who, despite not being biologically related, reinvent the traditional meaning of family. In a similar method to Halmoni and Soup and Ideology, the filmmaker indulges the audience in the daily domestics of these women, which presents relationships, characters, and their lived experiences, giving fresh perspectives on the bonds that have grown out of what has happened in their lives.

It is through the vehicle of memory that this series of films finds its ground, the sharing of experiences which contributes to an oral history of a nation. In bringing them to one season, we hope to piece the fragments together to form a collage image of a national past. The closing film, Factory Complex (Im Heung-soon, 2014), presents the stories of many who suffered in the textile and technology industry, bringing us full circle to the struggle of workers, as these women share similar experiences to those of the protagonist of Under Construction.

Traditional formats of historical writing and accepted historical fact do not always prioritise spoken testimonies, but it is in this respect that these documentary films are able to present stories that other modes cannot. From this series of films emerges the undervalued labours of women and workers, whether physical or emotional, often ignored throughout history. It is through their memories and their day-to-day lives that we can discover and rebuild a collective memory. Their experiences have an impact, their testimonies are Living Memories that we wish to share and preserve.

Robyn Minshall, Amina Ferley Yael, Roberto Oggiano & Paula Maguire

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As we enter the summer months, we are ushering in (almost) everyone’s favourite season with a collection of films that capture the palpable balmy energy that comes around at this time of year. Within our collection of films for Summer Nights we will explore the rich aesthetic textures that emerge in cinematic depictions of the distinctive Korean summertime.

Korean weather is volatile, particularly in the summer, where temperatures soar up to 37 degrees and monsoon showers overwhelm in an instant. Amongst this climactic uncertainty are all kinds of sensory delights, with sounds, smells, textures, and tastes providing a unique ambiance that appears across cinematic representations of the season. Our Summer Nights programme seeks to harness these aesthetic qualities as the perfect backdrop to explore fleeting romances, intimate domesticity, internal struggle; all the crucial stages one experiences in a lifetime, so that the meaning and experience of summer takes on infinite forms.

In our opening two films, we begin by looking at summer during the time of youth that is often defined by the growing pains of adolescence. In Yoon Ga-eun’s The House of Us (2019), the summer season provides the setting for escapist wonder for a group of children away from their fraught lives at home. Our next screening, Kim Bora’s acclaimed feature debut House of Hummingbird (2018), arrives at a slightly later point, but one that remains rife with the familiar issues that arise while growing up. What emerges is a kinship between the summer season and our childhoods, offering us an opportunity to explore feelings of nostalgia and our own memories of summer.

The next stage in our journey sees the summer months arrive during adulthood where the good weather and pleasant atmosphere is almost something of an inconvenience. In novelist-turned-filmmaker Zhang Lu’s tender romance, Gyeongju (2014), we encounter a man in the throes of grief, processing the death of a friend. Over the course of a particularly hot day and night we see his healing process imbued with summer’s beaming glow. For the couple at the centre of Sleepless Night (2012), the stuffy summer months have come to embody the malaise that has set into their lives. In their compact apartment they use the time to ponder the next steps to take into their uncertain future.

Finally, we will take a look at summer as we reach our old age. Our closing film, Lee Chang-Dong’s Poetry (2010), features the legendary actress Yun Jung-hee in the lead role as a grandmother who embarks on a new creative journey; however, it seems that time is no longer on her side. A beautiful rumination on life and death, the summertime setting reveals itself as a time for rebirth and an opportunity for potential change.

The laid-back charm and the heightened emotions of the Korean summer will be presented over the course of this season via films and other fun events. To go alongside our screenings, we will be hosting accompanying discussions with special guests that aim to further explore what makes up a Korean summertime.

Sam Elder

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