Jang, Sun-woo
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Seoul, 20 March 1952. (Also known as Jang Man-chul.) He majored in Anthropology at Seoul National University. During his student years he worked with a theatre group and became a cultural activist. He was arrested for political activities, and spent six months in jail in 1980. He entered the film and TV industries as a scriptwriter. He met Son-U Wan in 1982 when they were both working as assistant directors on Choi Ha-Won's The Invited Guests; he went on to write seven TV film scripts for Son-U before they collaborated on the direction of the independent feature Seoul Jesus. He directed his first solo film in 1988. His films have won many domestic prizes and increasing international attention. Hwa-om-kyung won the Alfred Bauer Prize at the 1994 Berlin Film Festival. He will write and direct the Korean episode for the British Film Institute's series The Century of Cinema.
INTERVIEW
I went into film-making because I was looking for a way to protest against the authorities that wouldn't get me arrested. Martial law was in force at the time I was a student, and my activities with a theatre group and on street demonstrations got me sent to jail for half a year. I never made short films, but I did shoot some videotapes: some records of theatre performances, and documentaries about a factory shop-floor and about a village that would be flooded by the construction of a dam.
I co-directed Seoul Jesus with Son-U Wan because my police record make it hard for me to sign it myself, Also, I had no confidence about handling the technical aspects, and needed someone with more experience alongside me. The film was a simple work of imagination: what would happen if Christ appeared in Seoul today? My feelings about the Christian church (especially but not only in Korea) are strongly skeptical ; there has been enormous deviation from what I understand to have been Christ's teachings. The original idea was to end the film with the protagonist's crucifixion, but we had to change that to a happy ending. Actually, we had two problems throughout the production: no money, and no cooperation from the authorities, who saw it as an anti-government film.
We made Seoul Jesus independently because we couldn't find a producer. I did find a producer for my next film, and so I made it within the film industry. There are sometimes negative aspects to working with a producer, but on the whole it's an easier way to make films. I don't think there's any significant creative difference between what I did in The Age of Success and what I'd done in Seoul Jesus: this time, I set out to satirise society's commercial and economic development. The story is a satire on commercial exploitation, advertising and so on. In the 1970s, materialism from America conspired with Korean fascism to deform society, and I wanted to register a protest, that's all.
After that, I planned a film to be called Red Room, about a good citizen who is arrested for political activities, jailed and severely tortured. He ends up brainwashed and helpless. But the film was stopped before we even started, and I decided there was no point in trying to pursue such explicit protest themes. That was when I picked up Park Young-Han's novel Lovers in Woomuk-Baemi and decided to film it. I liked the fact that it was about ordinary, suburban people, and that Park described them on the basis of first-hand experience and observation. Because of its location in the outer suburbs of Seoul, Woomuk-Baemi is a place of transition, where the values of the countryside and the city meet and intersect. I didn't see the place or the characters as symbolic of anything; I just wanted to show them realistically.
The balance of power between the man and the two women in Woomuk-Baemi is quite realistic, I think. There are many cases like that in this society. The man is fundamentally weak (he's poor, he has less of everything than his lover) and that's why he comes on so aggressive. My own impression, looking over Korean history, is that the notion of male domination is something of a myth. Korea may well be classed as a patriarchal society, like many others, but the truth may be somewhat more complex.
The key difference between Woomuk-Baemi and Road to the Racetrack is the social level of the main characters. The people in Woomuk-Baemi are working-class and poorly educated. The central couple in Racetrack may have working-class roots, but they are privileged and well-educated. That's what interests me about them. They have studied abroad and come home: what do they now make of Korea? What have they become? I don't see them as symbolising anything, but they are certainly representative of a much larger group in society.
I suppose you could see parallels between Seoul Jesus and Haw-om-kyung, but Hwa-om-kyung is much more concrete in its approach to society. It also emphasises a philosophical dimension that was missing from Seoul Jesus. Obviously Hwa-om-kyung raises many social and political questions, but as far as I'm concerned it centers on questions of individual completeness and the freedom of the individual. I had the idea of adapting Ko Un's novel (an imaginary biography of Sonje, the protagonist of an ancient Buddhist sutra) because I felt dissatisfied with existing ways of evaluating the direction our society is moving in. I sensed that viewing it through the world of the sutra would provide a new perspective.
It may be true that the Buddhist doctrine of acceptance contradicts the idea of social and political activism, I'm not sure. But the actor who plays the political prisoner in the film had been through exactly those changes in real life: he was arrested and jailed for political activism, and he has become a Buddhist. He loved the dialogue we gave him. He did change in prison. I can relate to that, because my own character is so changeable. Society gets more and more complicated and it has so many aspects that I want to explore. I don't want to stay in one place, literally or metaphorically.
I have many projects that are as yet unfulfilled. I would still like to make a film about the Kwangju Uprising, and the new political climate opens up that possibility. I was so shocked by what happened in Kwangju, and I still feel the need to deal with that. But I'd also be interested in making a film about the artists of the Chosun Era (the Yi Dynasty, 1392-1910, and one great calligrapher in particular. And I feel a strong impulse to make a film about the young generation now, about that makes them different.