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| A scene from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's "Permutations" (1976) / Courtesy of MMCA |
By Park Han-sol
Four female avant-garde creators whose experimental and forward-looking oeuvre has freely crossed the boundary between literature and cinema in the past century have been brought to the limelight at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA).
"Film_Text and Image," an MMCA film and video program that is presented at the museum's Seoul venue, introduces 12 cinematic works of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha (1951-82), Forough Farrokhzad (1934-67), Marguerite Duras (1914-96) and Susan Sontag (1933-2004).
All of the four writers didn't stop at delivering their thoughts in text alone; instead, they chose to further explore the moving image as a different, equally powerful kind of language.
Born in Busan in 1951, Cha and her family moved to the United States in the early 1960s after witnessing political turmoil in their home country. Displacement and immigrant identity became major themes in her postcolonial creative experimentation that traversed across mediums of writing, filmmaking and performance art.
Her magnum opus, "Dictee," poetically weaves disparate subject matters, including her own immigrant identity, the patriarchal culture of Korea experienced by her mother, feminism and the language itself, into its nonlinear narrative.
Cha's films, "Mouth to Mouth" and "Permutations," alternate among three languages ― Korean, English and French, like "Dictee" ― and between still and moving images to focus on the entangled relationship between spoken languages and the unspoken. Her works continue to hold significance among Asian American and feminist writers, four decades after her tragic, untimely death.
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| A scene from Forough Farrokhzad's "The House is Black" (1962) / Courtesy of MMCA |
Farrokhzad was a pioneering poet and filmmaker whose frank writings like "Captive" and "Another Birth" delved into the tabooed subjects in her conservative home country of Iran ― female desire and liberation.
In 1962, she produced what turned out to be her first and only documentary, "The House is Black." The film records her 12 days spent in a leper colony as it likens their lives in isolation to oppressive Iranian society and beyond.
Duras was a prolific writer and movie maker based in France. One of her bestselling, Goncourt-winning novels, "The Lover," was adapted into a cinematic masterpiece directed by Jean-Jacques Annaud. But she produced films based on her own writing as well ― "Woman of the Ganges," "India Song" and "Her Venetian Name in Deserted Calcutta."
Sontag once wrote in her essay, "Regarding the Pain of Others," that literature "was the passport to enter a larger life; that is, the zone of freedom."
An outspoken art critic and writer whose celebrated works include "On Photography," "Notes on Camp" and "Illness as Metaphor," Sontag didn't shy away from launching fierce criticism toward contradictions and problems inherent in American society.
Just as her literary career spanned a wide range of interests, her films ― "Brother Carl," "Promised Lands" and "Unguided Tour," among others ― touched on diverse themes, from personal psychological crises to U.S. hypocrisy and anti-Semitism.
Along with the film screenings, related lectures and recitals will be led by academics, authors and curators throughout the program's run.
"Film_Text and Image" runs through Dec. 18 at the MMCA Film and Video.
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