서울국제여성영화제

'Feminist Collective' presents films from all ages that delve into the aesthetics of cinema and feminist movements. This year's program explores ways to write the historiography of women's films under the theme 'Historiography and/of Women's Films.' Mark COUSINS' 14-hour epic Women Make Film: A New Road Movie through Cinema makes use of clips from some 700 films by women filmmakers and is guided by voice-over narration by female actors from England, the USA, India and New Zealand, including Tilda SWINTON — the film's producer. The film breaks free from the predictable approach of narrating the history of women's films. Rather, it seems more like a genderneutral textbook on filmmaking based on the themes and compositions of its chapters. However, what sets it apart is that the textbook has been produced entirely by women directors. This makes us reconsider the relationship between historiography and feminism.

The screenings of KIM Soyoung's two short films from the 1980s, Fantasy in Winter and Blue Requiem, as well as works by previous members of Ewha Womans University's NOUE, can be seen as an attempt to restructure the history of Korean independent cinema in terms of gender. The 1980s centered around the image movement armed with a keen sense of social criticism, while the historiography of the 1990s marked by the advent of auteurism that achieved both aesthetic and social consciousness. Interestingly, the illusionary praise of realism that supports them both can become completely different narratives when restructured with gender in mind. In particular, KIM's two short films are sharp blades that ferociously tear apart the existing narratives of the history of Korean independent cinema.

Despite the increasing criticism of gender discrimination in the practice of historiography or film criticism, the general consensus is to add feminist criticism as a final chapter in the existing historiography of cinema. This is largely due to male critics of the first world who tend to regard it as an independent division, separate from the existing historiography of cinema, instead of critically analyzing the world from a feminist point of view or exposing the gendered characteristics of the rules, regulations, practice and aesthetics of existing film discourses. Women Make Film: A New Road Movie through Cinema, and films from the early days of Korea's independent feminist cinema, will be screened and discussed as a way to challenge and reconstruct such problematic issues in the history of cinema from a feminist perspective.    HWANG Miyojo / Programmer