How Do American Audiences Receive Korean Films?

Korean Film Archive 'Why Korean Cinema?'
Lecture Inviting Six Film Scholars Active in the Americas

The Korean Film Archive will hold a special lecture series titled "Why Korean Cinema?" from the 24th of this month to the 5th of next month. This event is planned to commemorate the 50th anniversary of its founding. It aims to gauge how contemporary audiences in North America and the film academia receive Korean cinema. Six film scholars active in North America have been invited to share the backgrounds of their research on Korean cinema and their main research themes.

Professor Seunghoon Jeong of California State University, Long Beach, will discuss "Global Korean Cinema: How Should We View It?" focusing on how political and ethical changes in the global system have been reflected in Korean cinema, and what local characteristics and universal contradictions have been triggered.

Professor Hyesung Jeong of Colorado State University will share the importance of film archives and the history of Korean film censorship based on them, while Professor Kyuhyun Kim of UC Davis will present the reception patterns of Korean cinema among North American audiences through the works of director Park Chan-wook.

Professor Steve Choi of San Francisco State University will introduce the current status of research on Korean cinema in English and the possibilities of studying and teaching Korean cinema, and Professor Jinsu Ahn of UC Berkeley will explain how the discursive acts of Korean cinema expanded their expressive power, using the authoritarian regime as a turning point.

Also on the panel is Professor Eungsan Kim of the University of Washington, who studies Asian queer cinema. He will explain how Korean and Asian queer films have repeatedly undergone aesthetic and political experiments based on a unique temporality from the 1990s to the present.

A representative of the Korean Film Archive stated, "From sessions introducing the expansion of expressive power in Korean cinema due to political and economic system changes to the patterns of how American film enthusiasts have received Korean cinema, this will be an opportunity to introduce diverse research surrounding Korean cinema."