NAWFF Award 2016

SYNOPSIS

Nana works overtime every day. One Saturday, while working on their day off, it suddenly occurs to them that there is something wrong with their lives. They decide to change their lives and that first attempt is ‘knitting instead of overtime’. With colorful pieces born from thread made from old shirts, they carry out a performance to decorate the desolate city. The members all fired up by the ‘city terror’ fulfilled in the early hours of the day set up plans for other performances but things do not go as planned.

PROGRAM NOTE

The Knitting Club is an introspective report about
 the labor and social involvement and participation of
 individuals within a social enterprise. The film records
 the history of Korea\'s society beginning from the
 demonstrations against Miryang\'s 765 kilovolt powerline
 tower that took place in 2013 to the protests
 against the Sewol Ferry Special Law enactment
 in 2015. Nana, Zooey, and Beck, all of whom are
 employees in a travel agency, choose knitting as their
 way of remembering the series of events in society
 and interpreting them as their own problems. To these
 women, the act of knitting is the converging point
 between the macro-society and micro-individuals. On
 their way to work, they notice the expressionless, busily
 moving people and wonder about \"something that can
 make them giggle or smile\" and end up hanging their
 handmade embroidery on the railing of the bus stop.
 People who laugh at the knitted embroidery throw
 it away as trash. From the beginning, the film hints
 that these women\'s knitting activities and the social
 participation activities they do through knitting will
 not be easy nor go smoothly. The story unfolds just
 like the sequence of knitting: a knit stitch, purl stitch,
 disentangling the yarn, starting over, casting off, and
 weaving in the ends. Nana tries to establish a labor
 union in order to claim more power as a laborer in a
 social enterprise but ends up quitting her job. Zooey
 and Beck also work overtime endless times and also
 end up quitting so that they can travel after realizing
 that they cannot find a future in their social enterprise.
 Nevertheless, Nana\'s knitting reaches the final stage
 of \'weaving in the ends\', that final stage where, if
 you make a bit more progress, you will succeed at
 finishing your knitting project. [Sunah KIM]