Korea

While working on her first documentary film, director Areum meets a progressive party activist and a chef, Seongman, and gets married. After getting married, she takes Seongman with her to study in France, which she has long been preparing to do. In France, the only thing Seongman can do is housework. Not being able to read or speak the language leaves Seongman in depression, when Areum, the one responsible for their financial and administrative duties, gets pregnant. In order to help Seongman get over his depression, Areum suggest they start running “Oegil Restaurant”, a project to cook and serve to a limited number of guests on specific days. But after the birth of their baby, Areum starts concentrating on her studies and filmmaking, leaving Seongman alone in parenting. This leads to frequent aggressive fights, and Seongman declares a strike. Will Areum be able to juggle both her marriage and her film?

Sound of Nomad: Koryo Arirang starts with a diva of a tragic family history related to a history of migration. The rare archival footage re-animates her history reverberating with the current world crisis. This is a testimonial – a witness to injustice and tragedy, but it is also a declaration of survival – a survival that is not static but transformative – not brittle but fluid. The trains that displace, the deserts that separate from one harsh horizon –a historical limit– but within that limit, against it and across it are people, are a culture, not escaping but flourishing unofficially, with the affectionate majesty of a melody, a rhythm, an Arirang.

In-hi, a 28 year-old woman experienced paralysis in her upper body for no reason. Moreover accidents happened to her family incessantly. She regarded this as some kind of curse and visited Hae-kyung, the female shaman. In-hi found out that she is destined to be a shaman and fell into dilemma. Korean Shamans are the intermediaries between the living world and the spiritual world. They sometimes play a role as an advisor of life, sometimes as the cursed messenger of evil gods. They are a group of people who are usually despised by others, but they have been around for more than 5000 years, carrying the burden of the gift that god has bestowed upon them.

In Sorok-do where traveled by chance, we encountered an old woman, Lee Hang Sim, 78-years old, who was dragged into Sorok-do at the age of 4 by her parents because of Hanses’s disease. Pregnant after emancipation, she hid her pregnancy for 10 months for she was forbidden to give a birth. She couldn’t even scream in travail until cock crow in case she should get caught. It was all the bitter pain.

This film depicts the Gonya festival among the Tamang ethnic group in the Kathmandu valley of Nepal. The celebration for Gonya revolves around the performance of the bonbo, an equivalent for the more universal term “shaman” in Tamang culture. The film consists of three parts: The first part shows how the Gonya is incorporated within the overarching tradition of Janai Purnima, a Hindu religious festival, and the way it is celebrated locally in a unique collaboration involving shamans. The second part shows how shamanistic beliefs are experienced and maintained communally by focusing on a young shaman and his family holding a small ritual in a village during the Gonya. The third part follows a group of shamans led by one master shaman on the Gonya day, and demonstrates how they create a “collective effervescence” in this religious festival.