The Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul, a.k.a EXiS, was founded in 2004 by Moving Image Forum in order to screen experimental films and contemporary moving images that explore the unknown forms and territories of cinema. The festival values artists’ films made with an original vision that take on challenges and aesthetic adventures, and is one of the few places in South and East Asia that still screen works by artists who work with celluloid film.
This past July, EXiS held its 19th edition in theaters in Seoul, South Korea. For this special feature in e-flux Video & Film’s ongoing series Festival Forum, EXiS presents five films from this year’s festival showcasing current aesthetic approaches in Korean moving images for e-flux audiences, accompanied by a recorded conversation between EXiS programmer Inhan Cho and e-flux’s Lukas Brasiskis.
The films by Jeoung Yeoreum, Go-Eun Im, Yelim Ki, Soyun Park, Inwoo Jung, eobchae, and Youngzoo Im will be streaming on e-flux Video & Film Festival Forum for two weeks from Thursday, August 18 to Thursday, September 1, 2022.
Of the selection, EXiS curator Inhan Cho writes:
“Obviously, as a result of the pandemic, online streaming has grown in popularity on the film festival scene and has helped to expose more works to global audiences than ever before. Given rapid changes in forms of film production and presentation, there is a chance that we are seeing the last film festivals that take place in movie theaters. Therefore, unlike in the previous two editions, this year the Experimental Film Festival in Seoul brought people back to the cinema and demonstrated a commitment to present experimental films and artists’ moving images reflecting on some of the pressing issues of today. The festival’s most recent edition focused on collectives of moving-image artists, offering another opportunity to consider why the fundamental value of collective work should be addressed today. Aside from the COVID-19 pandemic that has altered our understanding of collectives, this subject was also informed by serious worries about the future.
The five films I selected to be streamed this year on e-flux’s Festival Forum platform reflect these same worries about the future of our planet and the species living on it. Some of these films draw on memories and events from the past to reconsider the present, while others look to the future through the lens of speculative fiction. These five films enable us to “travel” to the future intertwining the trajectories of objects, animals, images, and texts. Is it a stretch to consider these five films as possible futures? In Wunderkammer 10.0 (2021), directed by Yelim Ki, Soyun Park, and Inwoo Jung, the operating system Wunderkammer examines the state of images and their social aspects in the near future. While constructing its own fictitious universe and raising a series of issues regarding gender and class dynamics, eobchae’s AMAEBCH (2022) builds and reflects on agencies such as apps, anarchist organizations, and cryptocurrencies. Jeong Yeoreum, the director of The Long Hole (2021), examines the link between space and memory. The USFK (United States Forces Korea) base Camp Long becomes a main element of the inquiry in this film. Whereas Waiting M (2021) by Youngzoo Im is reminiscent of the well-known Korean horror drama M from the mid-1990s, and focuses on other instances in the past when individuals had mistaken notions. Finally, Go-Eun Im’s Three Circles with(in) the Whale (2022) weaves together several layers of different contexts, such as species, history, and limits of representation, to make the audience reconsider their place in the world. Of course, the aforementioned chosen works cover way more than this paragraph can indicate. There are various disparities in aesthetic concepts and production contexts across the works shown, but I feel that they all genuinely resonate with the current post-pandemic state of recovery.”
This program is part of the series Festival Forum on e-flux Video & Film, presenting collaborations with established and emerging moving-image festivals from around the world.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.