A free screening (a premiere) and discussion relating to Jeju Island and the US naval base.
Planetary Poetics Workshop: Village versus Empire (2016) Premiere and Panel Discussion
23 September 2017, 6pm – 8pm
Darwin Lecture Theatre (LT40) | Darwin Building | UCL | Gower Street | London WC1E 6XA
Please register here.
As part of our Planetary Poetics Workshop we will be screening Mark Kaplan’s latest documentary Village versus Empire (2016). This screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Dr Jaeho Kang (Senior Lecturer in Critical Media and Cultural Studies, Department of History of Art and Archaeology, School of Arts, SOAS), Dr Jacqueline Maingard (University of Bristol) and Dr Michael Stewart (Founding Director Open City Documentary Festival and Professor of Social Anthropology, UCL).
Village versus Empire (2016) is set on Jeju Island, off the coast of the Korean Peninsula – one of the ‘Seven Wonders of Nature’, and also known as The Island of Stone, Peace Island and a Woman’s Island –a place of beauty and wonder, with more UNESCO Natural Heritage Sites than any single geographic location on planet earth.
But, there is trouble in this paradise. It is being transformed – militarised. Its fragile ecology and ancient shamanistic traditions are currently being devastated by the construction of a US naval base that is perceived by the islanders as a globally dangerous provocation which imperils the island’s future and masks its troubled history. Village versus Empire, dramatizes the threat to Island life and nature, through the performances of an artist, Dohee Lee, born on the island and deeply troubled by its transformation, the activists who contest its occupation, the residents who have lived through its changes and the archive through which its traumatic past is uncovered.
All welcome.
