SIFF2022 Independent Film Archive: Faces of City, Gaze of Outsiders

[▲ clockwise rotation <Wall of Illusion>, <The Extra Lanes>, <Sad Tropics>, <Dead End>, <Namaste Seoul>, <A Black Christmas Eve>, <A Day of Poet Gubo>]

SIFF2022 Independent Film Archive:

Faces of City, Gaze of Outsiders

Independent Film Archive, the joint project between the Korean Film Archive and SIFF, marks its fifth anniversary. Introducing past films to the audience now, we face the essence of the film that transcends time and space. It is meaningful that the flashing moments and memories of independent films that are lost as quickly as the damage to the print are archived in time through this program.

This year’s theme is “Faces of City, Gaze of Outsiders.” As the meta-discourse burns and disappears, the flames in people’s hearts are also blinking. The atmosphere of the era where passion and cynicism intersected is engraved on the films of the youth of the time. Except for Jang Gil-su’s Wall of Illusion (1980), other films are made in the early 1990s; A Day of Poet Gubo (1990) by Yoo Ha, The Extra Lanes (1992) by Yang Yun-ho, Dead End (1993) by Kim Sung-su, A Black Christmas Eve (1993) and Namaste Seoul (1994) by KIM Dae-hyun, and Sad Tropics (1994) by Yook Sang-hyo; these seven films were restored.

We would like to express our gratitude to the senior filmmakers for allowing us to screen their early films. The ideals and passion of young filmmakers remain beautifully in the films across time. As always, we also meet with our senior filmmakers to leave oral history and video archiving. We hope it will be a valuable basic material for the study of Korean independent films.

KIM Dong-hyun / SIFF 2022 Festival Director

▷ SIFF2022 Independent Film Archive: Urban Faces and the Eyes of Strangers◁