South Korean Art Cinema Since the Late 1990s: A Focus on Lee Chang-dong, Zhang Lü, and Kim Bora

Abstract

The rise of Korean cinema at the turn of the century has inspired a flurry of new
understandings of the contemporary national cinema and the history of Korean cinema from different perspectives. However, Korean art cinema has yet to receive much critical attention. Concerned with the development of Korean art cinema since the late 1990s and what role Korean art cinema plays in the shaping of the perceived contemporary national self, this thesis argues that Korean art cinema has made an indelible impact on the national film industry, and continued involving in the transnational process between the West and the East and within the East. Privileging Korean art cinema as a site where niche Korean films take place, this thesis examines the career trajectories of three Korean filmmakers – Lee Chang-dong, Zhang Lü and Kim Bora – and their representative films. These case studies, concentrated in the 2010s, are: Burning (Lee Chang-dong, South Korea, 2018), Dooman River (Zhang Lü, South Korea, 2011), and House of Hummingbird (Kim Bora, South Korea, 2018). Through David Bordwell’s ‘Art-cinema Narration’ theory, Hamid Naficy’s concept of An Accented Cinema and Teresa de Lauretis’s The Technology of Gender, this thesis investigates how Korean art, diasporic and women’s filmmaking are represented in the national film industry and culture. By approaching these filmmakers and their works through contextual and textual analysis, each provides their unique modes of production and ways of circulation, as well as different narrative strategies and uses of 5 mise-en-scène. Korean art cinema, then, provides case studies for examining these Western film theories, more importantly, is the primary site in which the diverging aspirations and desires of Korean film industry are played out.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ruby Cheung: orcid.org/0000-0002-9652-7573

ORCID for Tim Bergfelder: orcid.org/0000-0001-6585-6123

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