I attended the opening of the Korean film festival, "Korean Cinema Today" at the "House of World Cultures." The film, Jiseul, is set on Jeju Island in April 1948. 27,000 islanders were massacred as rebel communists because they lived off so far off of the main peninsula. I won't watch anything violent or suspenseful in any way . . . but this film was about the stories of the villagers, their fears, hopes, expectations . . . their fight for survival when wrongly accused. Violence was alluded to, but not the kind of "in-your-face" violence we are far too often shown in mainstream cinema. It was more about the individual emotions of the horrific experience, the group spirit in the face of enormous fear, effectively presented in black and white. Described as a "cinematic requiem," it reminded me of the tens of thousands who died in the caves of Okinawa, my childhood home. Afterwards, I walked around the building in the dark night, wanting to photograph something to remember this evening. My many photos of the building seemed promising when viewed on the camera's LCD screen; shown larger, they showed the building's blemishes unappealingly. So, I did a "@vankrey" and overprocessed it to make it more interesting. A new experiment for me.
PS I've uploaded this twice, but for some reason, the impact of the hyperediting isn't showing up on this site and shows more of the flaws of the original . . .
Interesting story and movie...I wonder whether it will be distributed in Italy as well. Sometimes this kind of non commercial films do not find easy distribution, only in "cinema d'essai" .
