About This DVD

Asian Short Film and Video Competition Award Winners of Interational Women's Film Festival In Seoul 1997~2007

The first Women's Film Festival in Seoul opened with the catch phrase 'See the World through Women's Eyes' and has grown throughout the years with a rich selection of films that showcase the history of feminism establishing itself in film, a wide variety of off-screen activities, and the passionate response from the audience. Moreover, the festival has built a name for itself by providing a network that connects female filmmakers around the world.

The Asian Short Film & Video Competition is the only competition section of the Women's Film Festival in Seoul and has discovered and introduced films by women filmmakers from Korea and Asia. From 2001, the section expanded from the domestic scene to include films from all over Asia, gaining interest as a unique section that brings out into the open the reality, sensitivity, and awareness regarding problems facing women in Asia, and thus showing the powerful force of films made by women filmmakers in Asia. This year, the Women's Film Festival in Seoul has decided to present a DVD of a selection of short films chosen among award-winners from the first to the ninth festival, in order that they may be used in mapping out a more meaningful future.

Disk 1 contains six short dramatic films. They are set in everyday places that women live in, such as the subway, the home, the school, or the workplace, and express in a confident, sincere, yet light tone the experiences and the opinions of women that have been repressed or disregarded by patriarchal society. The films tell the stories of a mother who experiences menopause as her daughter begins her first period, a middle-school girl and a temporary teacher who are forced to acknowledge the politics of power before they are allowed to approach the real truth, women who face the invisible wall that stands in their way to pursuing a career and the women already on the other side of that wall who must tolerate all kinds of oppression, and women who have no choice but to stand in the dark shadow of Korean society as it undergoes globalization. Disc 2 contains three documentaries that show outstanding observations. takes an experimental probe into identities labelled 'homemaker/ ajumma/ mother/ wife', the docu-dram cooks up a tasty dish about the story of three generations of women who live together, while acutely portrays from within the conflict and pain caused by the oppression and internalization of patriarchy .

We anticipate that this collection of remarkable awareness of women and reality combined with the unique values of female creators will become valuable material that will explore the passion and aesthetics engraved at the forefront of the dynamic history of films by women filmmakers in Korea. Let's see the world with women's eyes.


Disk 1

To Be
PARK Chan-ok | Korea | 1996 | 4min| 16mm | color |
Hee-jung finds herself cowering from the threat of sexual harrassment in a crowded subway train. This film expresses the inner human impulse to deviate from the normal, bisexual tendencies, and the distorted feeling of victimization that women possess toward sex.

Oh! Beautiful Life
KIM In-suk| Korea | 2002 | 15min | DV | color |
Eun-sook has a job interview. She gets so nervous that she mumbles in front of the interviewers, but she still has high hopes for her bright future despite her present miserable life. This feel-good hip hop musical lets us wonder if her future will really be as rosy as she hopes it to be.

Feel Good Story
LEE Kyoung-mi | Korea | 2004 | 36min | 16mm | color |
Ji-young, a new employee of a small company, is devoted to her work, but ironically enough, she is given the task of evading taxes, thanks to that loyalty. Working late with Hee-jin, a co-worker who has dealt with tax evasion for many years, she feels a discreet hostility between Hee-jin and herself. While she moves toward the injustice of her company and society, a fire breaks out in the company building.

Garivegas
KIM Sun-min |Korea | 2005 | 19min | Beta | color |
Sun-hwa has to leave Garibong-dong when her company moves to another location. The move distresses her, and she becomes especially upset when her small, worn but cherished chest of drawers breaks in the process. After leaving a note and wiping the floor for the next tenant, Sun-hwa departs Garibong-dong with a combination of joy and sorrow and says goodbye to her pregnant friend.

Flowering Day
KIM Bo-jeong | Korea | 2005 | 38min | Digi-Beta | color |
A teenage girl, Young-hoo is irritated by her monthly visitor: menstruation. One day after her classmate Sang-woo helps her cover her blood-spotted skirt, Young-hoo develops a romantic interest in him. Meanwhile, afraid of menopause, Young-hooĦ?s mother collects her heart from her husband, and Young-hooĦ?s father experiences a kind of emotional menstruation as he endures monthly heartaches pining after a past lover.

You Will Know
KIM Young-jae| Korea | 2007 | 22min | 35mm | color |
Suppression becomes harsher when it goes down to the bottom of the power structure, and conditions of survival get sterner as well. The encounter of temporarily hired science teacher Young-sook and her student So-young happens at the bottom of the power pyramid. Young-sook is eager to be a full-time employee, whileher student is also eager to get a higher score. Who can blame either of the two for their secret deal? With brilliant characters and eye-catching aesthetic styles, the film elaborately deals with matters of power and survival.


Disk 2

Peekaboo : to be /not to be
LEE Kyoung | Korea | 1999 | 20min | Beta | color |
This documentary is not about some big social structure or event. Rather, it is a kind of self-confessions ofcommon Korean housewives. They talk about their broken dreams, confusions, and aspirations outside the "Good Mother and Wife " roles of Korean society. Kyoung, Lee, a director and also a mother and a housewife, made her first documentary with her home video camera interviewing her neighbors and friends. As she puts it, "this isthe record of voices of non-being. And that's the reality from whichwe should start out our long and winding journey for the true content of 'being'."

Drying Red Pepper
JANG Hee-Sun| Korea | 1999 | 54min | 16mm | color |
Relationship in a family can be so close that we can not see our family member's real existence. In a family, the members have their relative role names-grandma, mother or daughter, etc.- and each one expects and forces the member's role just in terms of their own view point. Regarding close family members as individuals - that may be a good starting point in viewing oneself and others from a different perspective.

Family Project: House of a Father
JO Yun| Korea| 2001 | 52min | DV | color |
A portrait of a Korean family living at the time the traditional family system and the modern one coexist. The man who is called "father" in Korea seems to take absolute control over the family but at the same time, he has no place for himself in the family. The film explores masculinity which distorts the relationships among the family members and enforces acceptance by the opposite sex in Korea.

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