"Songs from the North" by Soon-mi Yoo

Date: 

Sunday, November 16, 2014, 7:00pm to 8:30pm

Location: 

Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

Presented by the Harvard Film Archive

THE HARVARD FILM ARCHIVE PRESENTS
SONGS FROM THE NORTH BY SOON-MI YOO
with filmmaker in person

Co-sponsored by the Korea Institute

Best known for her lyrical and astute short-form essay films, South Korean-born and Cambridge-based artist Soon-Mi Yoo made her feature film debut with her most ambitious and complexly structured film to date, Songs from the North, winner of the the prestigious Golden Leopard for Best First Feature at the 2014 Locarno Film Festival. Songs from the North is an essay film which looks differently at the enigma of North Korea, a country typically seen only through the distorted lens of jingoistic propaganda and derisive satire. Interweaving images from her three visits to North Korea together with songs, spectacle, popular cinema and archival footage, Songs from the North tries to understand, on their own terms, the psychology and popular imagination of the North Korean people and the political ideology of absolute love which continues to drive the nation towards its uncertain future. Yoo’s sincere desire to look closely and objectively at North Korea gives a rare charge and emotion to her remarkable footage of intimate, everyday scenes as well as her poetic inter-titles and an extended interview with her father. To sincerely consider this country that challenges our most fundamental assumptions about the human condition is, Yoo argues, ultimately to question the meaning of freedom, love and patriotism. 

$12 Special Event Tickets

For more information: http://hcl.harvard.edu/hfa/films/2014novdec/songs.html