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Kaidu Club Experimental Shorts

Presented at film festivals hosted by Kaidu Club, at state film contests and in multimedia art shows, the short films featured in this program are all attributed to Kaidu Club’s originating member, Han Okhi. However, the hands of the collective’s many members mark them all with an eclecticism of style and technique: cofounding member and painter Kim Jeomson’s artwork is featured at the beginning of Hole, and she plays the main role in Untitled 77-A, alongside a cameo from Han herself. Dazzling in-camera effects, solarization, stop-motion animation, collage and dissonant sound and camera angles converge in Han’s work in an all-out attack on perception—as avant-garde artist Jeong Changseung remarked upon their viewing, they act like “a sharp razor blade cutting out the thick dead skin from one’s consciousness.” Where the films here roughly span the lifetime of the group’s activity, they also reveal a trajectory from loose linearity towards free association as they traverse themes like oppression, mortality, reunification, censorship and heritage. Nevertheless, the constant remains their insistent break from the times’ normative modes of production, narrativity and exhibition in the group’s radically feminist pursuit of “destroying existing concepts.”

Watch the online portion of this program at our Eventive site through December 12.

Kaidu Club experimental shorts screening introduction by Hannah Baek and HFA Director Haden Guest. ©Harvard Film Archive

PROGRAM

  • Hole (Gumeong)

    Directed by Han Okhi.
    South Korea, 1974, digital video, black & white, 8 min.
    Copy source: Asia Culture Center Cinematheque
  • The Middle Dog Days (Jungbok)

    Directed by Han Okhi.
    South Korea, 1974, digital video, black & white, 7 min.
    Copy source: Asia Culture Center Cinematheque
  • 2minutes40seconds (2bun40cho)

    Directed by Han Okhi.
    South Korea, 1975, digital video, color and b&w, 10 min.
    Copy source: Asia Culture Center Cinematheque
  • Color of Korea (Saekdong)

    Directed by Han Okhi.
    South Korea, 1976, digital video, color, 8 min.
    Copy source: Asia Culture Center Cinematheque
  • Untitled 77-A (Muje 77-A)

    Directed by Han Okhi.
    South Korea, 1977, digital video, color, 6 min.
    Copy source: Asia Culture Center Cinematheque

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