Screening "Soup and Ideology" for the Uncovering Memories: Violence, Cold War, and East Asia Series

 

 

2:30 - Venue open for audience

3:00 - 3:05 Greetings and introduction

3:05 - 5:05 Screening

5:05 - 5:20 Break

5:20 - 6:20 Conversation with Professor Janet Poole

 

 

Tracing back mother’s very last memory, we finally become a family. On one fine day in Osaka, Yong-hi invites her Japanese fiancé to her mother's house. When her father was alive, he never allowed her to meet a Japanese man, but her mother happily prepares the traditional chicken soup that’s only served to sons-in-law in Korea. Though shocked by the photos of KIM IL-SUNG on the wall, her fiancé says, “our ideologies are different but let’s enjoy the soup”. And now as a husband, he stands by them when the mother gets Alzheimer’s disease after confessing her old-time buried hometown secret that the daughter never knew; Jeju uprising.

 

 

YANG Yong-hi was born in Osaka, Japan as a second-generation Korean resident known as “Zainichi.” After she graduated from Korea University in Tokyo, she had worked as a teacher, theater actress and radio host. Since 1995, she started to work for TV documentaries and news programs about Thailand, Bangladesh, China and other Asian countries. Beginning in 1997, she spent six years in New York and obtained Master of Arts in Media Studies in New School University. After returning to Japan in 2003, she directed a documentary film Dear Pyongyang (2005) and won The Special Jury Award in Sandance Film Festival 2006 and The NETPAC Award in Berlin Film Festival 2006. She released her second documentary Sona, the Other Myself (2009) and her first narrative film Our Homeland (2012). Our Homeland won CICAE Art Cinema Award in Berlin Film Festival 2012 and awarded many major prizes in Japan. She published three non-fiction books about her family stories and a novel <朝鮮大学校物語>in Japan. In South Korea, <가족의 나라 OUR HOMELAND> was published in 2012.

 

 

This film screening series presents three films that explore experiences and memories related to violence, imperialism, and the Cold War in East Asia. By critically examining the Japanese armed group's resistance against neo-imperialism (East Asia Anti-Japan Armed Front), the unrecorded memories of women in U.S. camptowns in South Korea (The Pregnant Tree and the Goblin), and the herstory of the April Third Incident that spans Japan, South Korea, and North Korea (Soup and Ideology), these films delve into the enduring impacts of state violence and socio-cultural trauma. These discussions are essential not only for understanding the past but also for addressing its ongoing resonance in contemporary society.