The Institute for Korean Studies presents:
Ji-yoon An
Universität Tübingen
"Whose Accent? Situating Korean Diasporic Cinema"
Flyer: Forthcoming
Abstract: Two “Korean” films from 2009 were striking in their use of children as protagonists: So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain and Ounie Lecomte’s A Brand New Life. The significance of these two works lies in their similar narratives of children’s abandonment and journeying, but also in the comparable backgrounds of the filmmakers as Westerners with Korean origins. Both filmmakers left Korea as children. Both films were created as a memento of their Korean roots and childhoods in Korea. My interest in these two films is twofold. First, a textual reading reveals child perspectives as playing crucial roles in concealing the gravity of the issues of abandonment and adoption in the narratives. Second, I examine the “accented context” of the films and their filmmakers, borrowing from Hamid Naficy’s theory of “accented cinema” (2001). The geographic and thematic return to Korea and the Korean family by these Western Korean filmmakers brings forth questions beyond the narratives, of what constitutes a Korean film and a Korean experience. Ultimately, these two films are seen as examples of a growing Korean diasporic cinema.