Untitled 77-A1977 ‘무제 77-A’ short experimental Directed by Han Ok-hee
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Untitled 77-A
1977 ‘무제 77-A’ Directed by Han Ok-hee
The film contains the despair of an artist’s desire for creation on ruthless censorship, rebel, and anxiety in the mid-70s when it was politically and socially depressed.
15 years before Japanese underground such as "Tetsuo" and "Pinocchio 964", a little Korean woman went out to the streets of Seoul and shot passers-by with her weighty Bolex. After a day's outings, she fell into ecstasy dancing with celluloid in the editing room and cut reality into pieces of film with her sharp scissors.
Han Ok-hee is an experimental film director from South Korea. She began her career in filmmaking with the Moving Image Research Group and later formed the female experimental film group Kaidu Club with Kim Jeom-sun, Lee Jeong-hee, and Han Soon-ae.
Han Okhi and the Films of Kaidu Club :
There are two prejudices in cinema as it exists: filmmaking is only a man’s job and movies should be a box office success. We, as outsiders, will break these two stereotypes. – Kaidu Club, Chosun Ilbo, March 30, 1974
Existing filmmakers make films to make money, but we make money to make films. – Kaidu Club, Weekly Woman, February 9, 1975
As filmmaker Barbara Hammer proclaimed in 1993, “radical content deserves radical form.” Few filmmakers in South Korean history have so wholly embraced this call to action as Kaidu Club–credited as Korea’s first feminist film collective—and its founder, Han Okhi (b. 1948). During one of the most oppressive decades of South Korean politics and cinema, Kaidu Club pursued a radically feminist intervention through their spectacular experimental filmmaking. Recently, the confluence of Korean media’s global takeover and a surge in South Korean feminism have prompted film scholars and curators to recognize Han Okhi and Kaidu Club’s pioneering roles in the genealogy of South Korean women’s cinema.
In 1974, Han Okhi assembled the collective of amateur women filmmakers in opposition to the acute misogyny of Korean society and the film industry under President Park Chung-hee’s regime. Like Han, its earliest members—Kim Jeomson, Wang Gyuwon, Yi Jeonghui, Han Sunae, and Jeong Myosuk—were graduates from the elite women’s college Ewha University who lacked formal filmmaking training. Named in the fighting spirit of the unbeatable warrior great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan, Kaidu Club sensationally debuted in 1974 when they hosted the First Experimental Film Festival on the rooftop of the Shinsegae Department Store. Combining their eclectic backgrounds in literature, audiovisual design, fine arts, journalism and dance, they collectively produced and presented 16mm amateur experimental films, multimedia and street performances, and academic presentations for approximately four years.
What makes Han Okhi and Kaidu Club unique trailblazers of Korean feminist filmmaking is their wholly experimental approach. Already a well-read feminist, Han discovered the burgeoning experimental filmmaking movement shortly after completing graduate school and identified within the artform its uniquely visceral power to subvert convention, even beyond the confines of the film industry. The exclusion by Chungmuro (Korea’s “Hollywood”) of women filmmakers and its abysmally sexist representations of female characters prompted Kaidu Club to declare in 1975 that “there are no women in Korean film.” However, Kaidu Club did not seek acceptance within these patriarchal systems as filmmakers or film subjects. Rather, the group employed experimental filmmaking to thoroughly disrupt the very logic of these normative systems of oppression.
1977 ‘무제 77-A’ Directed by Han Ok-hee
The film contains the despair of an artist’s desire for creation on ruthless censorship, rebel, and anxiety in the mid-70s when it was politically and socially depressed.
15 years before Japanese underground such as "Tetsuo" and "Pinocchio 964", a little Korean woman went out to the streets of Seoul and shot passers-by with her weighty Bolex. After a day's outings, she fell into ecstasy dancing with celluloid in the editing room and cut reality into pieces of film with her sharp scissors.
Han Ok-hee is an experimental film director from South Korea. She began her career in filmmaking with the Moving Image Research Group and later formed the female experimental film group Kaidu Club with Kim Jeom-sun, Lee Jeong-hee, and Han Soon-ae.
Han Okhi and the Films of Kaidu Club :
There are two prejudices in cinema as it exists: filmmaking is only a man’s job and movies should be a box office success. We, as outsiders, will break these two stereotypes. – Kaidu Club, Chosun Ilbo, March 30, 1974
Existing filmmakers make films to make money, but we make money to make films. – Kaidu Club, Weekly Woman, February 9, 1975
As filmmaker Barbara Hammer proclaimed in 1993, “radical content deserves radical form.” Few filmmakers in South Korean history have so wholly embraced this call to action as Kaidu Club–credited as Korea’s first feminist film collective—and its founder, Han Okhi (b. 1948). During one of the most oppressive decades of South Korean politics and cinema, Kaidu Club pursued a radically feminist intervention through their spectacular experimental filmmaking. Recently, the confluence of Korean media’s global takeover and a surge in South Korean feminism have prompted film scholars and curators to recognize Han Okhi and Kaidu Club’s pioneering roles in the genealogy of South Korean women’s cinema.
In 1974, Han Okhi assembled the collective of amateur women filmmakers in opposition to the acute misogyny of Korean society and the film industry under President Park Chung-hee’s regime. Like Han, its earliest members—Kim Jeomson, Wang Gyuwon, Yi Jeonghui, Han Sunae, and Jeong Myosuk—were graduates from the elite women’s college Ewha University who lacked formal filmmaking training. Named in the fighting spirit of the unbeatable warrior great-granddaughter of Genghis Khan, Kaidu Club sensationally debuted in 1974 when they hosted the First Experimental Film Festival on the rooftop of the Shinsegae Department Store. Combining their eclectic backgrounds in literature, audiovisual design, fine arts, journalism and dance, they collectively produced and presented 16mm amateur experimental films, multimedia and street performances, and academic presentations for approximately four years.
What makes Han Okhi and Kaidu Club unique trailblazers of Korean feminist filmmaking is their wholly experimental approach. Already a well-read feminist, Han discovered the burgeoning experimental filmmaking movement shortly after completing graduate school and identified within the artform its uniquely visceral power to subvert convention, even beyond the confines of the film industry. The exclusion by Chungmuro (Korea’s “Hollywood”) of women filmmakers and its abysmally sexist representations of female characters prompted Kaidu Club to declare in 1975 that “there are no women in Korean film.” However, Kaidu Club did not seek acceptance within these patriarchal systems as filmmakers or film subjects. Rather, the group employed experimental filmmaking to thoroughly disrupt the very logic of these normative systems of oppression.