Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
David Pendleton 0:00
Good evening, folks. My name is David Pendleton. I'm the programmer here at the Harvard Film Archive. I did want to express our gratitude on behalf of Haden Guest, the director of the Archive, and myself, to our colleagues at the Korea Institute. It's been a most fruitful partnership. We here at the Archive rely heavily on partners to help us bring filmmakers and films to Harvard. And we've so far had, I think, a most fruitful and harmonious partnership. Director Hong Sangsoo was the fourth filmmaker that we’ve brought in conjunction with the Korea Institute. And so I did want to thank on behalf of the Archive, the Korea Institute at Harvard itself. I wanted to thank the Director David McCann; Susan Laurence, the Associate Director; Professor Carter Eckert; Dimitry Marineko, the Events Coordinator; and we've got a couple of volunteers for this event as well: Javier Cha and Park Chang-woo. Please join me in thanking them.
[APPLAUSE]
I won't say too much more about introducing Oki’s Movie except to point out that director Hong Sangsoo is somebody who's become more and more prolific. His pace has sped up, it seems, since he began when he made his first film in 1996. For the first several years of his career, he was directing one film every two years. Tthen for a while it was one film every year. He actually completed two films last year, both Hahaha, which we showed last Friday and the film you're about to see, Oki’s Movie, which we're very pleased to present in its New England premiere, and he's finished another film since then. So you're meeting a filmmaker who is sort of at the peak of his creative powers. I also note that the films have gotten more and more comedic, I would argue, and maybe we can talk a little bit more about that afterwards.
One very practical announcement: please turn off anything you have on your person that might make any noise or shed any light and leave it off for the duration of the film, which is a swift eighty minutes.
The films have gotten more and more comedic, and yet at the same time, they have retained their emotional depth. And director Hong has this ability to sort of balance these tones between light and dark that I find really fascinating. I think that's all I’ll say.
Right now, I'm just going to turn the microphone over to the filmmaker who is here and who will be here for a Q&A afterwards. Is there something that I'm forgetting to say? Oh! Thank you. That's exactly what I was going to say. We also have a piece of breaking news, which maybe director Hong might be too modest to mention to you. The Rotterdam Film Festival is currently celebrating its 40th anniversary. And in 1996, The Day a Pig Fell into the Well played there at Rotterdam, director Hong Sangsoo’s first film, one of the festivals that relaunched his international career. This year, in honor of their 40th anniversary, they're showing current films by people who were members of past film festivals. It's a section called “Return of the Tiger.” The tiger is their logo. And we have just learned that Oki’s Movie won the prize for the Return of the Tiger at the Rotterdam Film Festival. And he's here instead of being in Rotterdam, so please, welcome and thank Hong Sangsoo!
[APPLAUSE]
Hong Sangsoo 3:26
Thank you very much. I really appreciate that you came to see my film tonight. It's kind of raining…. Really, thank you very much and see you after the film.
[APPLAUSE]
[AFTER FILM SCREENING:]
David Pendleton 3:51
[INITIAL AUDIO MISSING]–so as that moderator did, I'll start with a question or two and then we'll open it up to questions from the audience. But I promise not to ask you about the theme of the film. Although I am curious about the structure, the segmentation. I mean, all of your films break into segments, it seems to me. I mean, in Night and Day, there are sequences that are dated; in Turning Gate and in Virgin Stripped Bare, there are titles for the different sections; here, we actually have like four different opening credits and four different titles. It was like the most extreme version of the segmentation that you always employ. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about why this kind of segmentation is important to you.
Hong Sangsoo 4:40
Oh, first of all, it just came out like that, so… But if I tried to analyze... I don't know, really. I just it's kind of… I don't know the expression. Maybe two hours is too long for one rush...
David Pendleton 5:12
Right.
Hong Sangsoo 5:15
I need to have an appropriate amount of lengths for taking breaths.
David Pendleton 5:27
Oh, that's interesting.
Hong Sangsoo
When I work I need to have a little segment and also a big segment. And maybe also just to get away from the normal flow of a narrative we are so accustomed to. It’s kind of boring, to analyze this. [LAUGHTER] Anyway, it just came out like that.
David Pendleton
Okay. Well, no, because it does seem to me that your films themselves sort of get into this flow of everyday life, and then suddenly we're confronted with the fact that we're watching a film. And we particularly in this film, we sort of have to start over each time and sort of figure out who are these people? And are they the same characters from before? And where are we in relation of time and space?
Do you think of the different sections of Oki’s Movie as separate films? And are they perhaps films made by separate people? Because it seems like you're playing sort of interesting game here in terms of narration. Is this first-person narration or third-person narration? And who's telling the story? Or who's making the film?
Hong Sangsoo
[INAUDIBLE]
David Pendleton
Oh, well, I guess my question is if you think about the film in those terms as well. I mean, because it does seem like a lot of times, what you're doing when you're making these films is playing with this question of who's speaking or who's film is it, in other words.
Hong Sangsoo 7:08
Probably, maybe around the middle—not middle—maybe after five, six days of shooting, I decide on the form. In the beginning, I didn't have the form
David Pendleton 7:22
You mean when you first started making films or when you first had making this film?
Hong Sangsoo 7:28
This film. So, around the time when I finished my first part, I decided that okay, this will be the form. I will have four or three parts, which seems like an independent piece, but connected to each other illogically. That was the, you know, form I decided on.
David Pendleton 7:58
And so, did you make the first part first? Was that sort of the idea that you started with?
Hong Sangsoo 8:03
I made the first part and then the second part, and the fourth part. And then it was like, maybe a little less than seventy minutes. And I asked people around me, “What is usually the length of a film which is considered a feature?” Someone said “Eighty minutes.”
[LAUGHTER]
David Pendleton 8:32
So you realized you had to make it ten more minutes longer.
Hong Sangsoo 8:34
Yeah, I wanted to make ten more minutes, so I came up with the idea of the third part.
David Pendleton 8:41
I see. I see. Well, it’s interesting, because this film is so much shorter. I mean, a lot of your other films are right around two hours, even a little bit more. Night and Day is even longer. But I also wonder, would you agree with me that it seems like your films have become more comedic over the years? I mean, you have an excellent sense of humor and of wit and your timing, I think, has gotten really good. Is that something that you're conscious of, your filmmaking becoming more comedic?
Unknown Speaker 9:13
No, I’m not conscious of it.
[LAUGHTER]
David Pendleton
Do you agree that your filmmaking–?
Hong Sangsoo
Some people laugh at my films, so I know, but…
David Pendleton 9:21
Alright. I mean, if we think back to The Day the Pig fell into the Well, you know, it's a film that’s very much about this sort of angst or malaise and there's a murder. There's actually a double murder suicide in it, etc, etc. And now, it seems like your more recent films have this much lighter– I almost want to say maybe a little bit more, not really detached, but sort of taking this distance that's so important for comedy. There's more of a sense of perspective now, and you can see that in the last section of Oki’s Movie.
Hong Sangsoo 9:51
I’d like to comment because, if I can choose, I would always choose the comedy instead of drama or tragedy. Also, I was trying to say something about the comedy trend... I never wrote down any sentence, or wrote any dialogue consciously trying to make a scene or the style funny. But when I'm writing in the middle of a sentence or after I just finished a sentence, I know because it can be funny. That's the difference, you know?
David Pendleton 10:40
So you see it right after you've written?
Hong Sangsoo 10:43
Yes. So when it came out, I didn't have the intention to make people laugh.
David Pendleton
Interesting.
[LAUGHTER]
Are there questions from the audience? Preferably not personal questions.
[LAUGHTER]
Yes, right here in the front, and if you can wait for the microphone...
Audience 1 11:08
I was wondering if you can talk about your zooms, and also a little bit about the swish pans, because, well, for one thing, your very quiet style of the wide shot… Oftentimes, when I watch your films, when the zoom comes, I'm a little bit surprised. And I wonder how you choose your zooms. And another thing is, especially with this film, I'm not sure how it is in Korea, but here in the States, and mostly in film schools, we're taught not to do those kind of zooms mostly, you know, this is what they generally teach. And I wonder if that's maybe a little joke for you, if in Korean film school, it's the same thing. Do they tell the students not to do those kinds of zooms?
Hong Sangsoo 11:53
Probably some people do that. But for me, one day, I just heard, I want to approach the actor....
David Pendleton
Get closer?
Hong Sangsoo
Yes. What is the problem with my English? [LAUGHS] Anyway…
David Pendleton
[INAUDIBLE]
Hong Sangsoo
No, it's okay. I can manage.
And that's the first reason and then, as I kept doing it, I noticed that by using the zoom, I can make a kind of artificial rhythm. So I have one more element I can use.
David Pendleton 12:48
It also seems like it has led to—or at least particularly in this film I was noticing tonight—really long takes two because you can sort of reframe within the shot. I mean, I haven't compared the shot length, but it seemed like the average length in this film is a little bit longer than in some of your other films. Is that accurate, do you think?
Hong Sangsoo
[INAUDIBLE]
David Pendleton
Oh okay, alright. Just thought I’d check.
Hong Sangsoo
[INAUDIBLE]
David Pendleton
That's okay. I mean, I should point out, too, that the zooms first started to appear, I think, around Tale of Cinema, if I'm not mistaken, around 2005 and it was a big shock, actually, to a lot of your fans because you had become so known for the static camera. And since then, I think it's become a really fascinating element of your visual style.
Another question? There’s a question right over here, and there's a mic just right next to you.
Audience 2 13:41
Thank you. For directing actors—and I'm thinking of last night's film, as well as tonight's film—particularly the female actor from last night's and this film, do you tell them how to react to the different love scenes and different emotions? Or do you let the actor decide?
Hong Sangsoo 14:09
Oh, I don't want them to decide anything.
[LAUGHTER]
What I mean is I try not to tell them too many things. But I think for a director, the most important thing about directing actors is casting. If you cast the right person, you don't need to talk a lot. And then the second important thing is write dialogue for him or her and then give him or her the right kind of environment when the shooting takes place. Then when I do the rehearsals just before the shooting, I listen to what they say and correct just a little bit. And then before that, I also give them the least amount of time to prepare. So, they usually have just enough time to memorize, but inside, they know how I work with actors. So they're kind of nervous in the first shot, in the beginning of making the film. They know they cannot prepare anything, because they don't know sometimes the story, anything. They don't know even the profession of the character. So they're just there. And we have some drinks before. [LAUGHTER] Just kind of trust each other. And somehow it’s there. And then if I give them the right dialogue, it just comes out like that. So technique is important, maybe ten or twenty percent. But eighty person of what's happening through their beings is not calculated. It’s not by decision.
Audience 2 16:35
Do they read the scripts prior to accepting their roles?
Hong Sangsoo 16:41
I don't have a whole script before the film. I have sometimes thirty pages of treatment, sometimes five pages of treatment. With this film, I didn't have any treatment. So they knew absolutely nothing.
David Pendleton 17:00
And so when you give them the script, do you give it to them scene by scene, or do you give them the whole thing right before you start shooting?
Hong Sangsoo 17:06
The first thing I do in the shooting days, I go to the place two hours before the actors. So I write the scenes I will shoot in the shooting day, usually four scenes or sometimes five or six scenes.
David Pendleton 17:27
Is that how you've worked since the beginning? Well, actually, The Day a Pig Fell into a Well, was one time you didn't–
Hong Sangsoo 17:33
From the fourth film, I worked like that. But before, I had to have a script to get sponsored.
David Pendleton 17:44
Oh, right. Right. Right.
Hong Sangsoo 17:45
But from the fourth film, I think I started writing the films in the shooting place..
David Pendleton 17:57
Interesting. Are there other…? I thought there was somebody up front who was gonna ask a question. There's a question. Steven, could you bring a mic down front?
Audience 3 18:07
Hi, good evening. It's my first film watching of yours. And thank you for coming over from Korea. I'm actually a fan of Lee Sunkyun. And I actually had a chance to meet him briefly when I was in Korea. So that was pretty cool. I really like his naturalistic style of acting, actually. And I was just wondering how—like you were saying that usually the actors don't have the script beforehand—how did you just make a decision on choosing him for that role for this film?
Hong Sangsoo 18:31
Maybe he has his own reason. Everyone has his own reason when they participate in my work... or different reasons.
David Pendleton 18:41
But why did you–? You're talking about the actor who plays–
Audience 3 18:46
Usually do people audition for your roles?
David Pendleton 18:48
The actor who plays Jin-goo, in other words.
Hong Sangsoo 18:53
When I have some kind of idea or sometimes I have a treatment when I start seeing actors. And when I meet them, I try to see them as a person, not as an actor. So like when I see you, even in a few seconds, I have an impression about you. Maybe she's like this kind of person, or something like that. It can be wrong, but it doesn't matter as long as I have some definite–
[LAUGHTER]
Audience 3
It’s the first impression, right.
Hong Sangsoo
As long as I have a definite clear image about you. Then I compare or I bring this image to the things I have prepared and then try to kind of foresee what will happen in one month's time. And then, okay, something happens, and I asked him if you want to work with me.
Audience 3 19:55
How long did this movie take for you, in terms of the actual duration of filming this film?
Hong Sangsoo 20:02
I remember this one shot in thirteen days, but I shot during the semester so I shot maybe twice a week or sometimes two times.
David Pendleton 20:18
So you shot while you were also teaching?
[LAUGHTER]
Because I had read, I think, in one of your official biographies, it says that since you started your own production company, you've been teaching less and spending more time working on your filmmaking. I mean, I know that when you were first starting that teaching was an important way for you to support yourself.
Hong Sangsoo 20:42
I taught in a different school and I kept that school but I had to make a living so I got into another school.
[LAUGHTER]
David Pendleton 20:54
And now you shoot digitally, yes? Has that changed at all your– How have you changed as a filmmaker? Do you think shooting digitally now instead of shooting on film, either in the ways that you work, or–?
Hong Sangsoo 21:08
In the beginning, consciously I tried to go to the shooting place as if I'm shooting with a 35 millimeter camera. I tried to ignore that I'm using a digital camera. But as I keep working with this camera, I find more conveniences and better effects. Because you know my takes are quite long, so when you [do] a take, even though you shot like twenty feet, your whole 400 [foot] roll goes away. Because for the next take, you also need the 400, so a lot of waste, and I don't like wasting anything so... And this camera is quite small. I shot this one with an EX1. A Sony EX1 is like this big.
David Pendleton 22:19
Did you operate the camera yourself?
Hong Sangsoo 22:21
I had a cameraman but we had only four crew members [besides] me. This is so easy to move around.
David Pendleton 22:32
Are there other questions in the audience? I have– No, go ahead. Steven, down front.
Audience 4 22:48
I have two questions. The first question is: how long usually do you spend on pre-production before shooting your movie? The second question is: you have like a full crew shooting the movie, but like the actors and actresses are kind of like top class in Korea. So how did you cast it? [If the] actors and actresses are very famous actors, how do you explain it [to them]?
Hong Sangsoo 23:20
That’s what I made a mistake about. They have their own reasons [LAUGHTER] or different reasons.
David Pendleton 23:32
And how long does the pre-production process usually take for you?
Hong Sangsoo 23:35
This one, I didn't have any pre-production period. [LAUGHTER] But other films I usually have like one month. I think I should mention, this one was done during the semester, but at the same time, I was at the end of the post-production period for Hahaha. So I was very busy and also tired.
David Pendleton
And you were teaching.
Hong Sangsoo
–and teaching and I didn't have any money. And somehow, I thought maybe if I push myself to the limit with this bad condition, I might come up with something different. That was the first intention I had with this project.
David Pendleton 24:30
Interesting. Thank you. Okay, there's a question back there. And then a question in the middle.
Audience 5 24:33
This is probably a boring question, but I know that David asked– The first question was kind of about this, about the self-reflexivity in a lot of your films—recently Tale of Cinema, Like You Know It All, this one. And so bizarre asking you a question when there are parts of your films where they have audiences and people questioning the filmmaker in the film. In other words, they're often filmmakers in the main characters. I wonder if you could say a little bit about the reflexivity in these movies, and if there's a kind of philosophy of film, or they're really just about you, or…?
Hong Sangsoo 25:19
I read some philosophy during my twenties and thirties. And some are very fascinating, but I never found a book with which I agree with its conclusion. So from that realization about my attitude toward these philosophies, I don't read many philosophy books. Whatever I do, I think it should represent myself in some way. And if I make a good one, it will have some material for some people to make some meaning out of it. That's enough for me.
David Pendleton 26:16
Do you find that people assume that the films are autobiographical, because so often, they're about filmmakers, or about people teaching film, etc?
Hong Sangsoo 26:25
It doesn't matter to me. It's a feeling, and I mean, if someone likes this feeling, it cannot be because of the autobiographical aspect. If someone doesn't like this feeling, it cannot be because of my auto- autobiographical aspect. (My tongue is not moving!)
David Pendleton 26:54
Yeah, I understand. There was a question there on the aisle.
Audience 6 27:00
I was just hoping that you could say a little bit more about the artificial rhythm that you achieve with the zoom. It's just a very inventive technique, and I like it very much. So I thought that was a very interesting comment that it creates an artificial rhythm. So could you just talk a little more about that?
Hong Sangsoo 27:22
What I meant by it, because it's so artificial?
David Pendleton 27:30
Because it does call attention to itself, like you were saying.
Hong Sangsoon
You felt that way, so I'm very happy. Thank you for your comment.
David Pendleton
To what extent do you think of yourself as a filmmaker within a national context? In other words, do you see your work as in relationship to Korean cinema or Korean society? Do you think of yourself as sort of a kind of a transnational or international filmmaker? Do you not think in those categories at all?
Hong Sangsoo
No, neither.
David Pendleton
Right, I shouldn't have said that last part, because I gave you that out!
[LAUGHTER]
[LAUGHING] Alright: “neither.” Are there any other questions? There's one over there on the aisle. I think that's Dima.
Audience 7 28:21
I have a question about whether you have any audience in mind when you make the film? Or are you making a film for yourself or for some other reason?
Hong Sangsoo 28:32
Yeah, after I finish the film, I expect any kinds of opinion or response. And I'm really willing to listen to anything from anybody, but while I'm making it, I think I have a specific audience [in mind]. I can say it's a good friend of mine. He’s a very intelligent person, warm hearted, very gentle. He likes my film. [LAUGHTER] He understands my fim, I think. That kind of person maybe is in my mind. [LAUGHTER] It gives me courage. {LAUGHTER AND SCATTERED APPLAUSE]
David Pendleton 29:18
Other questions? I was just gonna say that I started the Q&A thinking of the Q&A scene, in my head, from that film, but now I'm thinking more of the scene after the snowstorm when the two students show up and the professor says, “Do you have any questions?” and they ask him all kinds of philosophical questions, and he has very wise answers. They're not really answers to the questions, but they're all very wise. And that seems like a very autobiographical part of the film to me. [LAUGHTER] No comment.
Hong Sangsoo
What should I say?
David Pendleton
That's not [a question], that was just a comment, it was a way of wrapping up. Thank you very much for coming all this way, Director Hong Sangsoo.
Hong Sangsoo
Thank you very much. Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
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