[HanCinema at JIFF] Q&A with director Park Ki-yong

By personal request, Park Ki-yong requested that the moderator be Tony Rayns, a personal friend of his. Due to the necessity of having to translate Rayns' questions into Korean, the session is shorter compared to others. Still, it gives a fairly accurate portrait of what "Garibong" is about.

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Q: Why did you want to make "Garibong"?

A: I've always been interested in the Chinese population of South Korea. While working commercially in film, I lived for an extended period of time in one of these Chinatown neighborhoods and became really engrossed with the day-to-day of their normal lives.

 

Q: But that was some time ago, wasn't it?

A: The basics of the Garibong neighborhood haven't changed. It remains the waypoint for Chinese entering South Korea, just to find a community to help them orient themselves. Filming was completed in the first two months of 2013, and daily life hasn't really changed since then.

 

Q: Why the heavy concentration of personal scenes as well as objective shots of the general neighborhood?

A: My focus in making this film was the true day-to-day life of the Chinese living in this neighborhood. Not everyone wanted to do in-close personal documentation of their lives- they often don't trust native Koreans such as myself. So I used lots of objective shots of daily life to respect their personal privacy.

Q: Why no camera movement?

A: I had to do all of the filming by myself, and I quickly found that using a shaky camera just didn't work for the subject. By keeping the camera still, I was able to increase the sense of objectivity.

Q: Why no focus on the migrants' hopes and dreams?

A: For them this is just home, and getting by day-to-day. This film is meant to be more about their daily comforts rather than personal futures.

 

Q: Why the emphasis on long shots with no actions?

A: A lot of the Garibong neighborhood is defined by empty space. These long shots were necessary to establish this.

Q: Were any scenes staged?

A: No, that would have defeated the purpose.

 

Q: Why the title credits have such a strange font and background?

A: The signs in the Garibong neighborhood, which we see throughout the film, have a very unique transcribed style. I really wanted to emulate that for the full film.

Q: There's a strange wide-angle shot near the end, where it seems to be snowing outside, then we enter a restaurant and the outside looks different.

A: I wanted to preserve the metaphorical statement over literal adherence to the sequence of events as they happened in real-time. Those shots did not occur close together in time.

The last question came straight from the moderator, and though he spoke in English, the audience laughed at his question. For reasons that should, I think, be fairly obvious:

Q: I've been familiar with your career for a long time, and you used to do a lot more experimental films that dealt a lot with sex. Like how sex is used as human connection and all that. And now you do more normal documentaries. Have you stopped making sex films?

A: I have not lost interest in the subject of sex. I've been documentaries lately to get back in the mindset of real people, as I've spent a great deal of time in the Korean Film Academy teaching, and taking a more abstract view of film. Before I get back to fictional film, I feel I need back to real people and how they see the world, which is why right now I'm doing documentaries.

Park Ki-yong and Tony Rayns then thanked the audience for coming, and the many who had stayed for the session responded enthusiastically. And that was all for that night.

Report by William Schwartz