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8th DMZ Docs(2016)

I AM DOCU



The Silence

Park Soo-nam

  • Japan, Korea
  • 2016
  • 100min
  • DCP
  • color

Synopsis

In May 1994, the fifteen victims ¡®Comfort women¡¯ visited Japan. Most of the victims have passed away, but Ms. Lee Oksun, who has always led the way with playing the janggu, live in the Sokli Mountain now. The precious footage, recording close to Ms. Lee Oksun who testifies her deep resentment for half a century, shares the message from a surviving victim.

Review

Park Su-nam, a second generation Korean Japanese in her 80s, has been filming for over 20 years the victims of Japanese Army¡¯s ¡®Comfort Women¡¯. Three different time-lines intersect with each other in the film. It opens with a scene where the film-maker is reunited at Mt. Songni with Lee Ok-seon who is a victim. And then the film goes back to 1989 and conveys dialogues with Bae Bong-gi who had testified about her experience as a ¡®Comfort Woman¡¯ 16 years before Kim Hak-sun, for the first time in Korea, openly testified about her life as a ¡®Comfort Woman.¡¯ And the film shows the activities of 15 victims who went over to Japan and demanded official apology and reparations by the Japanese government. The film covers a span of almost 30 years, from the late-1980s when the issue of Japanese Army¡¯s ¡®Comfort Women¡¯ began to be raised in Korean Japanese community and in Korean society, to the mid-1990s when the victims put up a struggle directly against the Japanese government, and to the year 2014 when the film-maker and the heroine respectively in their 80s are reunited, and it makes us reflect on what we have achieved for the period. The film-maker, having the national identity of Korean Japanese, frames with his own point of view the issue of ¡®Comfort Women¡¯ which is complicated with the matters of nationality, war, sex slavery, women and patriarchy. [Jeong Min-ah]

Director

  • Park Soo-nam

    The Other Hiroshima: Korean A-bomb Victim Tell Their Story (1986)Song of Arirang – Voices from Okinawa (1991)Nuchigafu (2012)

Credit

  • ProducerPark Ma-eui
  • Cinematography Koshiro Otsu, Han Jong-gu
  • Editor Park Ma-eui

Contribution / World Sales

Contribution / World Sales  Arirang Production

E-mail  mai.park@gmail.com​