The film traces the evolution of South Korean cinema and politics since the 1950s, particularly examining their intersection within the historical context of “anti-communist art” during the Park Chung-hee regime in the ’60s and ’70s. Notably, the censorship and intervention of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency reveal the symbolic role of power and ideology in the relation between image and reality. The film prompts us to reflect on image creators: they may collaborate with power to serve its ideology or passively record images outside its control, yet even these can be influenced by a larger hierarchy of power. The Sense of Violence is a rigorous and compelling visual essay on images and representation.
Country
South KoreaYear
2024Length
114'
Category
DocumentaryPremiere
Italian
Screenplay
Mooyoung KimCinematography
Mooyoung KimEditing
Mooyoung KimMusic
Worramet MatutamtadaSound
Mooyoung KimProduction
Void spaceDistribution
Void spaceSynopsis
Biography
Kim Mooyoung makes films and engages in research-based media exhibition work. His first feature film, Night Light (2018), was screened in the Vision section at the Busan International Film Festival and won the Passionate Staff Award at the Seoul Independent Film Festival and the Best Cinematography Award at the Wildflower Film Awards Korea. Kim’s experimental short documentary Gold Dragon Mountain (2021) was invited to Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival.
Statement
I have spent nearly a decade exploring how ideology intervenes in sensory perception through various forms of art. One of the most striking instances of this intervention was during the 1970s under the Park Chung-hee regime, when the Anti-Communism Law imposed strict control over artistic expression, serving as the foundation for coercive censorship. Under this oppressive regime, artists were compelled to adorn the sheer brutality of violence with the sensations of sorrow and hatred. On the other hand, there were victims of ideology who were silenced, unable to expose the pain of violence. They were oppressed by the sensory experience of violence, embellished by anti-communist ideology, and compelled to forget the imprint of violence engraved upon their bodies. However, that does not simply vanish. One day, it inevitably resurfaces in strange and unexpected forms.
— Mooyoung Kim
Archival materials
US Army newsreels from the 1950s. Korean newsreels from the 1950s to the 1990s. Government propaganda films and anti-communist films from the 1970s and 1980s.
Screenings
