Seoul Dispatch. 2.

Of the films screening at the 8th edition of the Women's Film Festival in Seoul, I was most anxious to see Yeo Kyun-dong's Out to the World (1994) and Bang Eun-jin's debut, Princess Aurora (2004). Yeo's film lived up to my expectations, whereas Bang's, well, from what I'd been told, I didn't go in with expectations too high, so I can't say I was disappointed. But I'll start with Princess Aurora. Two cops are on the case of a serial killer who utilizes a wide-range of methods (scissors, skewers, plaster, etc) and leaves princess stickers at each killing site. As the case unfolds, one cop (played by veteran Moon Sung-keun of Road to the Racetrack and Jealousy is My Middle Name) begins to sense he knows the killer personally, as well as the personal reasons for the killings.

Deciding on a slasher flick as your first film is a bold move, bypassing the genres women filmmakers might feel pressured to direct. All the aesthetics we expect of such a film are in place, the sound of piercing and squishing, the violent split-second imagery, the blood splattering everywhere, even onto the screen. Unfortunately, even Bang's years of acting experience in films such as Park Chul-soo's 301/302 and Push! Push! don't keep Bang from a common first effort mistake, trying to pack too much in. As the revenge killings cumulate, they seem to thrust themselves into the narrative rather than flowing naturally, even after we look back upon the bigger picture with what we learn at the end. And the scene at the end, when the cops close in, has the serial killer exhibiting her psychosis in a way that comes off more humorous than horrifying. Still, I don't see the film as a waste of time, just not an exemplary film in the genre.

Whereas, considering the South Korean road movies I've seen, Out to the World is the best by far. Two prisoners (Moon Sung-keun again, along with Lee Kyoung-young) being transferred on a bus to another prison find themselves wrapped up in an escape planned by other prisoners. As a result, they reluctantly end up on the road together where they eventually pick up a third party, a woman (Shim Hye-jin of To the Starry Island, The Gingko Bed and, more recently, Acacia) who compares their antics to those of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, even soundtracking her fantasy sequence with the little ditty so popular from that film. They proceed to steal various forms of transportation, at one point taking a US Army truck that allows them to speed through a toll booth with no intentions of paying and with ten tons of political subtext, on their way towards a destination unknown with great humor and psychological effect.

Out to the World is screening here as part of a forum on presentations of women in representative films from the "Korean New Wave," so I will limit my discussion of the film to that focus. The films representing the "Korean New Wave" at WFFIS along with Out to the World are two by Park Kwang-su, Black Republic (1990) and Berlin Report (1991) and Lee Chang-dong's Green Fish (1997). With the exception of Berlin Report, Shim Hye-jin plays the lead female in each of these films. I do not have Kyung Hyun Kim's book The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema on hand to check myself, but if I recall correctly, he had noted how the female character in Out to the World is quite different from other female characters of the time, and the programmers here are in agreement, as am I. Shim's character in this film speaks her mind, demands respect, and gets it from her two escaped prisoner companions. They value her opinion. They ask her for more information about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid; they seek her guidance on how to use a cell phone (having been in jail so long the new technology is bizarre to them); and she drives them everywhere, including while engaged in that most masculine of tropes, a car chase. And they never have sex! Not that there's anything wrong with having sex, it's just that having sex is so often required in films of this sort it's nice to see someone stray from such plotlines. When we see their platonic bodies lying in bed, Shim bookended by both escaped prisoners, we witness a lovingly sweet, caring scene of equal outsiders finding each other inside. Rare for the Korean New Wave, Out to the World allows a female character a voice of her own in concert with the remasculinizing males.

And it is women's film festivals like this one that give a voice to groups of women who otherwise struggle to get themselves heard by the men in government and business. Two other films I caught exemplify the necessity of such festivals to provide such a forum. Lee Hye-ran's We Are Not Defeated! was one of two documentaries that received the Ock Rang Award this year. Supported by the progressive Ock Rang Cultural Foundation, the award seeks to provide an "incubator for women's film professionals" by providing "a stable production system for women documentary filmmakers." The other winner this year was Kyoung-soon's Shocking Family.

Created in conjunction with Feminist Video Activism, We Are Not Defeated! documents the words and experiences of the union members who attempted to address the multiple oppressive measures (only provided 15 minutes for lunch, expected to work over 12 hours a day, stuck in harmful environmental conditions, prohibited from taking bathroom breaks, etc) of the Dong-il Textile Company whose upper management prospered during the "Economic Miracle" of the 1970s in South Korea under the dictatorship of President Park Jung-hee. (As I mentioned in my Busan report last year, the transliteration of Korean words and names has changed, so I'm keeping with the transliteration provided in WFFIS's program. Park Jung-hee is more commonly known in the west as Park Chung-hee.) The union at this textile factory was under company control and run by men. Since women were over two-thirds of the employees under the jurisdiction of the union, these women united to elect the first women union president. Immediate successes in implementing such changes as 30-minute lunches, one day off a month, better ventilation, etc, were followed by harsh tactics to repress the female union members, eventually firing and blacklisting 124 members, keeping them from obtaining work at any other factories. At the height of this oppression was the infamous "Shit-Basket Affair," in which male co-workers infiltrated a women's meeting and smothered them with human feces mixed with ash, in some cases force-feeding them the feces as well. These are the kinds of things you really hope that humans never stoop to, but it's films like these that force us not to forget they do. Not only was this horrible act overseen by the Dong-il Textile Company, but Park Jung-hee's government colluded as well. In recent years the government has admitted its participation but the women have yet to see their demands fully met - they want their damn jobs back! Hence the title of this film. These women refuse to relent on their demands and continue to pressure the company and the government that have willingly caused such great harm to their citizenry. Considering all they went through and the relentless strength they've shown as they've persevered, these women, all in their 50s now, just might get to return to the shop floor completely vindicated.

Jang Hee-sun's Friendly & Harmonious is not a documentary, but more an industrial, mental hygiene, activist mélange of fictional portrayals based on composites of incidents of sexual harassment. In four separate episodes, we follow a young girl facing the lack of support in her first job as she is attacked by a male customer; a pregnant contract worker in her first trimester who is relentlessly pursued for sexual favors by her boss; a woman who barely survives an attempted rape by a co-worker at a company outing; and two women who intervene to assist their initially reluctant manager in making their department a place women wouldn't want to flee from. A co-production with the Korean Women Workers Association, the film has an intent to educate about employment policies along with implementing social change, so there are moments in each episode in which worker's rights issues are addressed (filing sexual harassment charges, maternity leave, etc), but for the most part, these seem to nicely flow into the events and dialogue of the narrative. Jang confessed during the Q&A that she tends to be pessimistic and reluctantly went along with suggestions to have the first and last episodes end more optimistically, but each ending is still open-ended, so one can bring their own interpretation to each of them. Particularly well-executed is the final short, which demonstrates the adverse effects a sexist work environment has on South Korean businesses: losing well-qualified women to western firms where their skills and knowledge are more valued. The third episode utilizes black and white for the present and color for the past, a nice switcheroo on how that temporal method is often used. The result is a similar effect as Michel Brault's use of black and white for the snowy streets of Montreal against the color used for the prison scenes of Les Ordres (1974), reminding us that the most horrible moments of our lives provide memories with the most vivid colors due to the connection the moment has with intense emotions, however painful those emotions might be. In the third episode, we see the stolen young adulthood the sexual attack caused, since her present is lived less fully after what happened in her bright past.

It is fair to say that South Korea is as homophobic as the town I grew up in. But as I came out of my town with an agenda to work on my homophobia, so has a packed house of South Koreans at Angelina Maccarone's German-Austrian co-production Unveiled, demonstrated by the warm applause the crowd provided during the credits. Unveiled begins with a woman unveiling as the plane crosses Iranian airspace. We quickly learn Fariba (played wonderfully by Jasmin Tabatabai) isn't one to follow Iranian rules for women when she goes to the airplane bathroom, douses her veil in water, covers the smoke detector and takes a long drag on her cigarette. This isn't the only thing she'll be dragging. Escaping Iran because she has been outed as a lesbian and having lied to the immigration officers about this, Fariba is worried she will be forced to return. So when an Iranian refugee she befriended kills himself, she takes up his identity. If the actor isn't up for the task in these films, such a plot could easily fail, but Jasmin Tabatabai is excellent here. Although the racists amongst her are presented a little caricatured at times, the film is nicely paced and ends powerfully. This is a film I plan to see again with friends if it makes its way to one of the number of San Francisco festivals that I hope are queuing up to screen it.

As for racists, Amma Asante's A Way of Life presents the ways of life amongst four differently racist residents of a Welsh town. Leigh-Anne is a single-mother on the dole who is having trouble negotiating her and her baby's needs, resulting in the electricity often being cut off. She is somewhat taken care of by her brother who fancies the Turkish girl next door (although his crew thinks she's half-Pakistani) and his friends, the contraband-cigarette-dealing Robbie and the aspiring footballer who hopes to erase his Pakistani half by changing his last name to "Hughes." The film is a well-rounded demonstration of racism as transference, for each character has developed personal reasons for racism that you understand without ever justifying. It is hard to watch such horrible people who commit a most horrible act, but Asante had me empathizing with their plight at moments while still condemning the mis-associations and faulty logic they throw around them. Unlike what Lakshmi Chaudhry found supported in Crash, A Way of Life demonstrates the kettle of White Solidarity on the verge of boiling over when simultaneous institutional changes are not made to address the various racisms within each individual.

I leave today after rushing to Dongdaemun to snag some Korean Baseball League caps for my pops and my bro and a football jersey for myself - South Korean entrepreneurs have yet to realize that many of us travelers want such things since there is practically only one place to get Korean baseball and football paraphrenalia and apparently nowhere to get any shirts with Hangul lettering on them - and then returning to the festival to catch Park Kwang-su's Black Republic. Then it's straight to a cab to the airport. I'm hoping my "Love Motel" will allow me to keep my luggage with them to collect after the sreening so I don't have to lug it in with me. This tiny anxiety over my luggage has me thinking about what caught my eye yesterday in the tinier program for WFFIS. The festival provides nursery services with a fully accredited staff to enable mothers and other care-givers to catch as many of the screenings as they desire. I'm hoping this is done at other festivals, but I can't say I've ever come across such services in a festival program before [Quick note: the Berlinale introduced a similar service this year - dwh.]. I can?'t say that I have ever looked for such services. Such demonstrates the catchphrase of this year's festival as much as any of the films presented - "See the World through Women's Eyes!"

Posted by dwhudson at April 10, 2006 5:20 AM