In my film Tower Crane (2006), I considered the question “what is the nature of cinematic space?” I based the film’s structure on the direction and rhythm of movement of a tower crane. By doing this, I intended to show the nature of cinematic space, which represents three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional screen. I also intended to link the materiality and the cinematic space of film by revealing the surface of the camera lens. When the rain drops fall on the surface of the lens at the end of the film, it makes the audience aware of the vanishing point of a frame. This strategy is based on the idea that vanishing points create the three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional screen.

I started out in filmmaking by making narrative pieces, so narrative is an important cinematic form to me. But when I think about the nature of filmmaking as an art form, narrative content is just one of many aspects of cinema; equally important is image and sound. For me, the most important aspect of filmmaking is the structure of image and sound, because I think that it is through the structure that the real subject matter of film is communicated. This structure is based on cinematic time and space, which is composed of filmic conventions such as montage and mise-en-scéne. My filmmaking is concerned with how meaning can be revealed through a film’s structure, utilizing the communicative potentials of montage and mise-en-scéne, rather than through its more obvious narrative content.

2007 Notthatbalai Art Festival
2007 Chicago Undergound Film Festival