“Cold War Border-crossers in Korean Cinema” - Hyun Seon Park
MCL Faculty Forum #4
Thursday, October 31, 2024 12:00 PM to 1:30 PM EDT
Horizon Hall, 5225
Park is currently working on a book manuscript tentatively titled Cold War Modernism in Motion: War, Memory, and Space in South Korean Cinema, which explores the aesthetics of Korean modernism within the context of Cold War geopolitics. This book investigates how Korean cinema, through critical processes of configuration and negotiation, has explored modernist impulses from the mid-20th century to the contemporary "Post-Cold War" era. In this project, Park discusses how the volatile experiences of the Korean War and the Cold War transformed South Korea’s political paradigm, giving rise to more aesthetic and affective expressions.
In this talk, Park will explore the cinematic representation of Cold War diasporas, with a particular focus on refugees, immigrants, and border-crossers within the trans-territorial geopolitics of the Cold War. By discussing a range of films—from postwar South Korean thrillers to Zhang Lu’s North Korean Defector trilogy—she highlights how Korean cinema critiques the notion of “surplus humans” and addresses the paradox of representation in relation to the bio-necro-politics of the (post-) Cold War system.
