Celluloid Democracy

Korean filmmakers, distributors, and exhibitors reshaped cinema in radically empowering ways amid political turbulence from liberation through the decades of military rule (1945-1987). With acts ranging from making films that brought the dispossessed to the screen to bootlegging as an effort to redistribute resources under the state's control, they explored ideas and practices that expanded the definition of democracy and pushed the limits of the cinematic medium. Drawing on archival research, film analysis, and interviews, Hieyoon Kim shows how their work foregrounds a utopian vision of democracy in which the ruled could represent themselves and exercise their rights to access resources free from state suppression. As the first account of the history of film activism in post-1945 South Korea, Celluloid Democracy shows how Korean film workers during the Cold War reclaimed cinema as an ecology in which democratic discourses and practices could flourish--

• | Author: Hieyoon Kim
• | Publisher: University Of California Press
• | Publication Date: Sep 26, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 182 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0520394372
• | ISBN-13: 9780520394377