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Korean
Films are Focus of Seventh Annual Asian Film Festival
Hosted by the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College
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Compelling documentaries about the Korean Peninsula are the
focus of the Seventh Annual Asian Film Series, hosted by the
Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College. The four film
series begins Monday, March 20, and continues through
Thursday, March 23. All screenings will be held in Room 101
of the Hahn Building (420 N. Harvard Ave., Claremont) and
will start at 4:15 p.m. For more information, contact: (909)
607-8065.
Focused on the politics on the Korean peninsula, the films
seek to shed light on complicated issues on political,
social and cultural fronts and present two radically
different personal stories of two filmmakers who arguably
are the leading documentary directors on the subject of
Korea.
March 20: The Game of Their Lives (2002, Daniel
Gordon, director)
To the astonishment of everyone, including themselves, the
North Korean soccer team caused one of the biggest upsets in
soccer history when they defeated some of the greatest teams
in the game to make it to the final round of the 1966 World
Cup. It has taken almost four decades to track down the
seven surviving team members and piece together the events
that led up to the soccer shock that stopped the world.
North Korea held the secrets of its champions until this
marvelous documentary probed deep enough. Combining footage
from the deciding matches plus unprecedented access to
Pyongyang, the original team and World Cup archives, The
documentary is alive with nail-biting suspense. The story of
a totalitarian regime meets top-level sport in the
international arena—a genuine thriller.
March 21: A State of Mind (2004, Daniel Gordon,
director)
A State of Mind follows two North Korean schoolgirls and
their families for the nine months leading up to the Mass
Games—the biggest and most elaborate human performance on
earth— and in the process takes you inside the secret world
of North Korea and the hearts and minds of three generations
of North Koreans.
March 22: The Six Day Fight in Myong Dong Cathedral
(1997, Kim Dongwon, director)
On the night of June 10, 1987, hundreds of student and
citizen protestors fleeing the police took refuge in Myong
Dong Cathedral and began a sit-in protest. This film is a
record of the event which sparked the famous June 1987
pro-democracy struggle in Korea. Film footage and
eye-witness accounts reveal the development of the protest,
the hopes and the disagreements of the protesters, and the
political background of the event. In particular, the film
focuses on the background to the sudden dispersal of this
very symbolic Myong Dong protest, which captured the
attention of people throughout the world.
March 23: Repatriation (2003, Kim Dongwon, director)
In the spring of 1992, filmmaker Kim Dong-won became
acquainted with two long-term "unconverted" political
prisoners. Sent to South Korea as spies, they were arrested
and spent 30 years in prison, serving out their sentences
without renouncing their Communist beliefs. Drawn to their
stories and their personalities, Dong-won filmed them for
more than a decade. By the end of the 1990s, relations
between North and South Korea had significantly improved,
and even the most hardened unconverted cases were released.
How did these men survive the dehumanizing conversion
process of systematic torture for more than 40 years? What
awaited them in the outside world? What was their final
destiny?
Director Daniel Gordon will attend both of his screenings.
He is currently working on his third documentary, Crossing
the Line, which will tell the story of the four U.S.
soldiers who defected to North Korea in the 1960s. Through
this story of the real-life “Manchurian Candidates,” more of
North Korea will be shown than ever before. Now considered
one of the leading directors of documentaries about Korea,
before his first film, Gordon knew little of Korean
peninsula politics beyond that there was a North and South
Korea.
Kim Dong Won has been Korea’s leading documentary and
independent filmmaker since the early 90s. Kim began making
documentary films after working as a feature film assistant
director in the 1980s and then founded the documentary film
collective P.U.R.N. Production in 1991. He has since
produced and directed approximately 30 documentaries. Many
of his works have involved people forced out of cities by
redevelopment and other factors, the pro-democracy movement,
and the schism between North and South Korea.
The Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College is dedicated
to expanding and enhancing comity and shared knowledge among
the nations and cultures that face on the Pacific Ocean. A
valued study, media production and research center for the
distinguished, PBI also offers books, films and lecture
programs to a general as well as academic audience. Pomona
College has been a leader in Asian Studies among American
college and universities since the turn of the past century.
For more information on Pomona College, visit www.pomona.edu.
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