25th Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
Labor News No.1
synopsis
The working class continues to be a victim of the cold war on both sides of the Korean Peninsula. While in the North it led to the establishment of a totalitarian regime, in the South, factory workers have become the target of anti-Communist propaganda and the modern-day slaves of gigantic government-backed corporations. Recordings of protests, television talk shows and songs about the fight against injustice present the wave of collective defiance that swept across the entire country in 1989. South Korean unions organized mass demonstrations in which the struggle was not for the Left or for the Right, but for democracy and the right to a dignified life.
“How much more we can get is not the whole issue. What is at stake is the problem of whether we could secure the foundation for humane lives, or go back to the lives of slaves.“ Labor News No. 1
biography
Labor News Production, also known under the acronym LNP, was established in 1991. It is active in many areas, including production, research and educational programs. Its aim is to contribute to the democratization of South Korean society through the mass media.more about film
director: | Labor News Production |
other films in the section

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"My work is based on traditional Korean painting and my experience with abstract painting." Youjin Moon
Ganymede
Youjin Moon
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

This key work of video art from the pre-Internet era presents the present saturated by sensory stimuli and its global dimension in a visionary way. The breathtaking psychedelic stream flows between avant-garde and the mass media, as well as among cultures. Allen Ginsberg, John Cage or Navajo, Korean and Nigerian artists ride the same wave.
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Global Groove
Nam June Paik
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea

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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

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"The traces of hidden time and dream were revived and playback eternally." PRISMA
PRISMA
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

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"The situation requires us to make films on social issues." Dongwon Kim
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

This film has a 500 views limit.
Each Wednesday noon, a group of women gather in front of the Embassy of Japan in Seoul to stand up for the rights of comfort women. They demand that the Japanese government issues a formal apology and pays damages to the Korean women who were forced to serve as sex slaves by the Japanese army during the WWII. After years of living in seclusion and humiliation, these women decided to share their stories with the director and speak about this previously undisclosed chapter of the history of Korea. The Murmuring is one of the first Korean documentary films widely distributed in cinemas and forms the first part of the director's documentary trilogy about Korean women forced into sexual slavery, with the second part called Habitual Sadness (1997) and the third and final part My Own Breathing (1999).
„When I was gathering my friends to work with, I had a chance to visit House of Sharing – which was located in Hapjeong back then. Halmonis at House of Sharing were hostile to me just because I was a documentary filmmaker. I, however, was rather fascinated by their deep wounds and the defensive wall they had built. That was how the film started, but what I didn’t know at all was that it would turn out to be an eight-year-long documentary trilogy.“
The Murmuring
Young-joo Byun
South Korea / 1995 / 93 min.
section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

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IM Heung-soon
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea

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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea

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“The collision and irony between faith and the world, the unbridgeable gap.”
An Escalator in World Order
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea

The clip, one of twenty news clips that Kim made for the American Information Service shortly after the end of the Korean War, tells the story of a car. The vehicle speaks in a continuous monologue to the audience as it follows the process of its demise and rebirth. The components move from the junkyard to the car factory, where they are transformed into the metal interior of a new vehicle. We are not just following the story of the car, but that of the entire country as it recovers from the war and builds a new economy, led by businesses like Hyundai, a symbol of prosperity and national pride.“How will humanity make enough for three meals a day out of post-war poverty?”Kim Ki-young
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section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere

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"I compose films rather than edit them - to me, it's like creating a piece of music." Kelvin Kyung Kun Park
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Kelvin Kyung Kun Park
South Korea / 2010 / 79 min.
section: Transparent Landscape: South Korea
Czech Premiere