Seoul Searching: Culture and Identity in Contemporary Korean Cinema

✍ Scribed by Frances Gateward (ed.)

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 330
• Series: Horizons of Cinema
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Seoul Searching is a collection of fourteen provocative essays about contemporary South Korean cinema, the most productive and dynamic cinema in Asia. Examining the three dominant genres that have led Korean film to international acclaim—melodramas, big-budget action blockbusters, and youth films—the contributors look at Korean cinema as industry, art form, and cultural product, and engage cinema’s role in the formation of Korean identities. Committed to approaching Korean cinema within its cultural contexts, the contributors analyze feature-length films and documentaries as well as industry structures and governmental policies in relation to transnational reception, marketing, modes of production, aesthetics, and other forms of popular culture. An interdisciplinary text, Seoul Searching provides an original contribution to film studies and expands the developing area of Korean studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Frontcover ......Page 1
Title ......Page 4
Copyright ......Page 5
Dedication ......Page 6
Contents ......Page 8
List of Illustrations ......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 14
Introduction......Page 16
Part 1: Industry Trends and Popular Genres......Page 28
1. Korean Cinema after Liberation: Production, Industry, and Regulatory Trends......Page 30
2. "Christmas in August" and Korean Melodrama......Page 52
3. Storming the Big Screen: The Shiri Syndrome......Page 70
4. Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movies: Or, Consuming Youth in the New Korean Cinema......Page 88
Part 2: Directing New Korean Cinema......Page 112
5. Scream and Scream Again: Korean Modernity as a House of Horrors in the Films of Kim Ki-young......Page 114
6. Forgetting to Remember, Remembering to Forget: The Politics of Memory and Modernity in the Fractured Films of Lee Chang-dong and Hong Sang-soo ......Page 130
7. Reflexivity and Identity Crisis in Park Chul-soo’s "Farewell, My Darling" ......Page 156
8. "Nowhere to Hide" : The Tumultuous Materialism of Lee Myung-se......Page 172
9. Closing the Circle: "Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East?" ......Page 190
Part 3: Narratives of the National......Page 204
10. Waiting to Exhale: The Colonial Experience and the Trouble with "My Own Breathing" ......Page 206
11. Crossing the Border to the “Other” Side: Dynamics of Interaction between North and South Koreans in "Spy Li Cheol-jin" and "Joint Security Area" ......Page 234
12. Race, Gender, and Postcolonial Identity in Kim Ki-duk’s "Address Unknown" ......Page 258
13. Transgressing Boundaries: From Sexual Abuse to Eating Disorders in "301/302"......Page 280
14. Taking the Plunge: Representing Queer Desire in Contemporary South Korean Cinema ......Page 298
List of Contributors......Page 314
0 - A......Page 318
B - C ......Page 319
D ......Page 320
E - H ......Page 321
I - J ......Page 322
K - L ......Page 323
M ......Page 324
N - P ......Page 325
Q - S ......Page 326
T ......Page 327
U - W ......Page 328
X - Z ......Page 329
Backcover ......Page 330