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Activism and Post-Activism. Korean Documentary Cinema, 1981-2022

These programs present an overview of Activism and Post-Activism: Korean Documentary Cinema, 1981-2022 (Oxford University Press, 2024), the first English-language monograph on Korean nonfiction film and video practices in the non-governmental and non-corporate sectors from their foundational period (early 1980s) to the present. Making tripartite connections between the sociopolitical history of Korea (from the 1980s mass anti-dictatorship movement to twenty-first century labor issues, Truth and Reconciliation, feminism, LGBT rights, environmental justice, and key events such as the Sewol Ferry disaster and the Candlelight Protests), documentary's aesthetics and politics, and the shifting institutional and technological evolution of documentary production and distribution, what is unique and particular about this forty-year history of Korean documentary cinema is the intensive and compressed co-evolution of activism (including social change documentaries aimed at engaging social movements in the form of alternative nonfiction media practice) and post-activism (a set of twenty-first-century documentaries whose formal and aesthetic experimentations gesture toward overcoming and renewing the activist tradition). – Kim Jihoon

Current and upcoming film series

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Harvard Undergraduate Cinematheque

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Albert Serra, or Cinematic Time Regained

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Wang Bing’s Youth Trilogy

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The Shochiku Centennial Collection

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Planet at 50

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The Yugoslav Junction Continues!

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Theo Anthony, Subject to Review

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The Ideal Cinematheque of the Outskirts of the World

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From the collection – Satyajit Ray