South Korean Cinema: Week 3 - Gender and Sex
April 19, 2023
South Korean Cinema: An Unconventional Crash Course
Gender and sex have long been tangled up in Korean filmmaking, both on- and off-screen. From the industry’s historical exclusion of female filmmakers, to the glorification of certain archetypal male characters over passive female characters, to the queer-coded subversion of heteronormativity, to the controversy around films that explore feminism in a #MeToo era… gender and sex are everywhere in South Korean cinema.
This week, we will tread deeper into these murky waters to think more expansively about gender and sexuality in South Korean films. To do so, we will watch auteur Kim Ki-young’s psychosexual and supernatural drama Io Island (1977) to explore the dynamics between “men,” “women” and beyond. As well, we will unpack the queer revenge story of Memento Mori (1999), parse the heated discussions around the “#MeToo film” Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 (2019), and sample the exciting subversion of patriarchal filmmaking achieved by Korea’s first feminist film collective, Kaidu Club.
TICKETS & PASSES
Class Pass including all classes and screenings: $120 Sustainer | $100 Regular | $75 Member
Individual Talks: $25 Sustainer | $15 Regular | $10 SIFF member
