Park Nohchool

10.18399/acta.2009.12.2.002

South Korean independent cinema people’s cinema activist cinema national cinema thesis North Korean film theory

This study examines the origin and development of people’s cinema (minjung yŏnghwa) as the determining feature of the South Korean independent cinema movement in the 1980s. Defying the simplistic description of people’s cinema as political propaganda which arose in the mid 1980s, this study illuminates the multiple aspects of the idea that originated from the intricate dialogues between youth culture, minjung discourse and theories of resistant filmmaking. The 1980s youth culture rooted in universities is examined first to see how the youth culture functioned as both the producer and consumer of resistant cultural practices including people’s cinema. Based on this discussion, this study tackles the three main aspects of people’s cinema. First, it shows that people’s cinema emerged as an alternative film aesthetic to conventional narrative cinema, a variation of which was film documentary. Second, along with analysis of the film texts, it also shows how people’s cinema ideologically flanked cinema as an instrument of political activism. Lastly, it discusses the way in which people’s cinema developed into a national cinema thesis (minjok yŏnghwaron) in combination with North Korean film theory.