A Graduate Student Perspective-KI Graduate Summer Research Grant Summer 2015, Becky Keung Yoon Bae, G3, EALC

I spent around three weeks in Seoul in total for archival research at the Korean Film Archives, where I made extensive use of their oral history archive, which contains their ongoing project to interview veteran filmmakers and film workers in the Korean film industry. Many of the oral histories were recorded in interview transcripts, while others were videos made available in the KFA’s multimedia lab.

Using the KFA’s database, I focused on reading or listening to ‘lifetime’ oral histories of filmmakers born in the 1920s or the 1930s, those who had experienced pre-1945 Korean (Chosun) filmmaking and had also made the transition into the post-1945 film industry. (The KFA, as far as I could find out, did not permit scanning or copying of archived texts.) These included not only film directors and actors, but also crew members who had worked in lighting and cinematography, as well as producers, censors, and editors. While some of the oral histories were well-annotated, with ‘chapter’ headings, organizational keywords, and explanatory footnotes, others were simply straightforward transcripts of conversations, some of which were actually difficult to decipher due to dialect or confusing phrasing.

In total, I examined seventeen separate oral histories, which provided valuable insight into the cultural and technological challenges these film workers faced in their industry. In particular, I was able to trace the trajectories of specific individuals, such as Hong Sung-ki (a former colonial-era Manchu Film crew member), Inoue Kang (a Zainichi cinematographer to acted as a technology transmitter for Korean filmmakers), and Yang Ju-nam (a key Korean cameraman in both pre- and post-1945 Korea).