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Category Archives: Documentaries

Saturday documentaries at the KCC: Koryo Buddhist Paintings

08-Nov-08

Saturday documentaries at the KCC: Koryo Buddhist Paintings

Every Saturday, from November till the end of December, the KCC will be screening a documentary on Koryo Buddhist Paintings. Acclaimed as "divine artistry" in Asia, the Koryo Buddhist Paintings are known for their "infinite labour". In one painting, 15,000 miniscule faces of Buddhas were drawn in gold to make a single figure of Buddha. Their unique technique of painting on both sides of the canvas, as well as use of natural mineral paints, have allowed these works to retain their vivid colour even after 700 years, and they remain among the very oldest, and best-preserved, works of their kind, providing invaluable insight into Korean art and history to this day. Some of these paintings, along with other Buddhist relics from ...
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Make this Saturday a Korean day

22-Aug-08

Make this Saturday a Korean day

I've already told you about the films this Saturday. Take your pick between The Chaser at 4:40 in Leicester Square and Seven Days in Brunswick Square at 6:30. How about making a whole day of it? Turn up at the Korean Cultural Centre earlier in the day and browse the DVD / CD library and watch your favourite soap / sample the singing talents of the shapliest K-popstrel in the audio-visual section downstairs. Stroll round the exhibition of Korean and English (and Korean-English) Vessels on the ground floor. Pop across the river to the Hayward Gallery to see Psycho Buildings. It's not often you get to see a hip international Korean artist showing at a South Bank venue. Book in advance for your ...
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Saturday documentaries at the KCC

24-Jul-08

Saturday documentaries at the KCC

This Saturday there will be a screening of a short film entitled "The History of Gold" at the Korean Cultural Centre at 12pm, 2pm and 4pm. Each screening will last around 30 minutes. Silla dynasty gold earrings, 6th century AD. Diameter 3.5cm, Height 8.3cm. National Treasure No. 90, Seoul National Museum. Silla people decorate their houses with silk interwoven with golden thread, and use golden plates and cutlery at meals (Arab historian, 10th century) A country that is filled with the splendour of gold and silver, such is the Kingdom of Silla (Chronicles of Japan, AD 720) Referred to as a "Nation of Gold" by its neighbours, Korea is a country with an extraordinary history in gold craftmanship. Of the ten pure gold crowns from ancient times, ...
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Crossing the Line screening, with Q&A

04-Aug-07
One of these last-minute things I'm afraid. I just checked my least-used email account to find information about a screening of Crossing the Line at the Frontline Club (near Paddington Station) tomorrow, Sunday. There was to have been a Q&A hosted by director Dan Gordon, but he's had to pull out due to ill health, so Keith Howard will be stepping in. From the Frontline Club website: Screening: Crossing the Line Sun 5th August, 4.30pm Price: £5.00 Followed by Q&A with filmmaker Daniel Gordon Keith Howard Location: 13 Norfolk Place, London, W2 1QJ This is the story of Comrade Joe, the last American defector to North Korea, who became a coveted star of the North Korean propaganda machine, but then disappeared from the face of the ...
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Koryo Saram - the Unreliable People

10-May-07

Koryo Saram - the Unreliable People

Report of a documentary film screening at SOAS on 2 May, by Michael Rank Koryo Saram - The Unreliable People is a fascinating one-hour documentary about the 200,000 ethnic Koreans who were deported to Kazakhstan by Stalin in 1937. It includes archive footage never seen before outside the former Soviet Union as well as interviews with some of the deportees. Koreans first started setting in the Russian Far East in the 1860s, fleeing extreme poverty, and their numbers grew after the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910. Grotesquely, Stalin suspected them of being pro-Japanese and dubbed them "unreliable people" and deported them some 4,000 miles west to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and parts of the USSR, together with other minorities whom he distrusted including ...
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Free documentary screening

26-Apr-07
Date: Wednesday, 2 May 2007 Time: 17.00-19.00 Title: Koryo Saram - The Unreliable People (one hour documentary film)* Director: Y. David Chung Director of Photography and Editor: Matt Dibble Executive Producer: Meredith Woo Historical Consultant: German Kim (Kazakh State University) Venue: Khalili Lecture Theatre, Main Building, SOAS *The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with David Chung and German Kim, makers of the film In 1937 Stalin began a campaign of massive ethnic cleansing and forcibly deported everyone of Korean origin living in the coastal provinces of the Russian Far East, near the border with North Korea to the unsettled steppe country of Central Asia 3,700 miles away. This story of 180,000 Koreans who became political pawns during the Great Terror is the central focus of ...
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DPRK on the BBC and elsewhere

15-Mar-07
On Radio Three, on BBC TV, and also on the National Geographic Channel. First up, what you've all been waiting for: the screening of Dan Gordon's latest film, Crossing the Line. It's on BBC4 on 22 March. Set the video, because of course most of you in London will be having some Ferrero Rocher with the ambassadors, won't you ((The equivalent available at Young Bean is their peppermint humbugs. Not quite 박하 사탕, but probably as near as you are going to get in EC2))? It's on at 9pm and repeated at 12:50am (just after midnight the same evening). It lasts one and a half hours. Next, Andy Kershaw, the BBC's World Music supremo, has two travel programmes featuring music in the ...
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Daniel Gordon’s latest, and other NY Times DPRK coverage

24-Oct-06
The coverage at the NY Times in the past few days has been something else. A piece on Daniel Gordon's third film on the DPRK, Crossing the Line (Image above, from VeryMuchSo Productions), which premiered at PIFF recently. I hope it comes to the UK soon. I've just emailed Nick Bonner to find out. Some good maps showing the DPRK / China border, and where any refugees cross. An article on how to buy your way across the Tumen River Hardly a surprise, a piece on the lack of internet access in the DPRK A Nicholas Kristof Op-ed arguing as follows: While North Korea can survive punitive sanctions, I don't think the regime can survive the shock of having 700,000 of its citizens working for ...
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