One day, you asked me, “Are you living your life to the fullest?” After hearing that question, I could not get out of that thought. What does it mean to live diligently? Hearing such words from someone you love creates a very strange and ambiguous feeling. And for some reason, I keep repeating to myself the phrase that eternal happiness is endless unhappiness. I collected around 30 German educational films, reassembled their fragments into a new essay film, and used AI to test the narration with my own voice. As the voice gradually became robotic, I felt an inexplicable fear emerging between the existential film and the transformation of my voice.
Country
GermanyYear
2025Length
20'
Category
ExperimentalPremiere
Italian
Screenplay
Chanmin KimEditing
Chanmin KimMusic
Chanmin KimSound
Chanmin KimProduction
Academy of Media Arts CologneDistribution
Chanmin KimAcademic and educational context in which the short film was developed
Acadey of Media Arts CologneSynopsis
Biography
Chanmin Kim was born in Seoul, South Korea, in 1994 and is currently studying Media Art in Cologne, Germany. His practice primarily focuses on experimental film, experimental sound, and performance. His films and performances have been screened and presented in various countries around the world, including South Korea, Germany, the United States, the United Kingdom, Colombia, Mexico, Turkey, and France.
Statement
I selected around 30 German educational films dealing with subjects such as work, rescue, birth, illness, the human body, and the natural world. From each film, I extracted sequences ranging from 30 seconds to three minutes and reassembled them around a text I wrote myself, creating an essay film concerned with self- reflection. The various figures, relationships, and events extracted from these films are torn apart and brought together through an improvised montage guided by the text, gradually forming a new narrative. Through this process of recombining images and narratives of others found within the archive, I explore my own position and condition as an individual, both personally and within a broader social context.
— Chanmin Kim
Archival materials
Films from the FWU archive, produced between 1936 and 1984, as well as from the archives of the Federal Republic of Germany, Berliner Filmladen, Institut für Film und Bild Grünwald, Cinémathèque Nestlé, and other anonymous filmmakers.
Extra
