Seoul Was

Seoungho Cho / Republic of Korea (South Korea) / 2026 / World Premiere / 9 min.

synopsis

A transformed Seoul fails to coincide with the place held in memory in a composition tending towards abstraction. Between its former and present forms, the city the filmmaker left in 1988 opens a void that the visible cannot fill. The rhythmic rapid montage lets only crumbs of fleeting images of Seoul linger: a metropolitan symphony unfolds into a meditation on the unfamiliarity of familiar places, as intimacy gives way to estrangement.

“I push my images of it to the edge of abstraction” — Seoungho Cho

Source: Electronic Arts Intermix.

biography

Seoungho Cho (1959) is a South Korean artist. He studied graphic design in South Korea and video art in New York, where he lives and works. His work explores the aestheticisation of everyday life and the representation of nature through technology. He creates highly stylised audiovisual collages. The Ji.hlava IDFF has screened his films Buoy (2008), Blue Desert (2011), Stoned (2013), the series Latency, Contemplation (2016–2019) and Tracked (2020).