When I first began to explore the history of Korean cinema, I found there was a blank spot. In the few sources I could locate at the time, the 1950s were described as a decade of sudden commercial rebirth after the destruction of the Korean War, led by the success of smartly-produced melodramas like Madame Freedom (1956, directed by Han Hyeong-mo) and the early works of Shin Sang-ok. The 1960s were a golden era, which produced a wide spectrum of work ranging from dark masterpieces like Kim Ki-young's The Housemaid (1960) and Yu Hyun-mok’s Obaltan/Aimless Bullet (1961) to historical epics, family comedies, and the genre films of directors like Lee Man-hee. The 1980s were a time in which slowly relaxing censorship and regulatory reforms helped a new generation of socially-conscious filmmakers like Park Kwang-su and Jang Sun-woo to make their debut. And the 1990s, in which Korea's largest conglomerates entered the film industry, marked the first steps in the transformation that would lead to the commercially-vibrant, youth-oriented Korean cinema of today.
However in contrast to the detailed explanations of the periods listed above, the 1970s were often afforded only a quick summary. In the 1970s, theatrical admissions collapsed. Television replaced the cinema as the average family's primary source of entertainment. Censorship reached its strictest level in the postwar era. Many film companies viewed the production of local films as merely a requirement set out by the government. Korean cinema fell into a deep slump, from which it would take almost three decades to recover.
The first time I wrote about the history of Korean film -- a brief essay posted on the web in 1999 – I too devoted little space to the 1970s. But as the years passed and I saw more films, and gained a deeper understanding of Korean film history, I began to feel guilty about this oversight. The paradox about the 1970s is that, although it's true that the quality of the average Korean film fell to its lowest level in this decade, the best films of the 1970s display as much originality and force as those of any era. Despite working on limited budgets, with shoddy equipment and rushed production schedules, Korean filmmakers were able to accomplish something remarkable in the 1970s.
This 10-film retrospective is not intended to represent the full spectrum of filmmaking during the "darkest decade." Many different generic and thematic trends emerged during the 1970s, each perhaps worthy of their own retrospective. In recent years some festivals, including the Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival, have shined a spotlight on the freewheeling action films and "Manchurian westerns" that have influenced some contemporary Korean directors such as Kim Jee-woon and Ryoo Seung-wan. Although often shoddily constructed and barely coherent in their storytelling, there is an energy and unpredictability to these films that have endeared them to contemporary viewers. Other commercial trends of the 1970s include a series of youth comedies kicked off by the success of Seok Rae-myeong’s Yalkae, a Joker in High School (1976); anti-Communist war films like Im Kwon-taek’s Testimony (1973), government-supported historical epics such as The War Diary of Admiral Lee Soon-shin (1977), and above all the trend of "hostess films" -- melodramas featuring lower class women or prostitutes who are meant to embody in some way the wounds of a turbulent, difficult era.
Although echoes of these broader trends may be found in some of the films of this retrospective, the primary focus is on a certain type of director: highly individualistic, creative filmmakers who were driven by the need to explore meaningful themes and push Korean cinema in new directions. Such directors' ambitions were particularly likely to collide with the government's censorship apparatus and the regulatory structure of the film industry in general. It wasn't merely that many of the issues and ideas they wished to raise were destined to end up on the censors' cutting room floor. With independent production outlawed and the industry consolidated into a few large companies, the Korean film industry resembled a large factory designed to turn out a particular kind of film. Directors with larger ambitions, who wished to create original works of lasting value, had to find some way to game the system.
The directors we focus on in this retrospective come from a variety of backgrounds, and employed different strategies to overcome the hurdles placed in their path. Im Kwon-taek had established himself in the 1960s as a reliable director of genre films, but in the 1970s he was able to move towards a more reflective style of filmmaking, partly by taking on government-commissioned works that other directors wished to avoid. Kim Ki-young, although today recognized as one of the masters of his era, was less highly regarded in his time, and ran into increasing difficulties with producers and censors as the decade progressed. Kim Soo-yong remained highly in demand throughout the 1970s for his ability to shoot high-quality films on a tight schedule, and because of this he was able to shoot the experimental, modernist films that most interested him on an occasional basis. Yu Hyun-mok was recognized as an artistic master, but had never connected with mainstream audiences, and in the 1970s often turned to anti-communist films as a means of keeping active. Finally, a number of young directors such as Ha Kil-chong (who returned to Korea in 1970 after studying at UCLA film school) and Kim Ho-seon tried actively to revive film culture in Korea and introduce new styles of filmmaking, though their efforts would be met with resistance.
Surely, if these directors had found themselves in a more supportive environment in the 1970s, they might have made very different kinds of films. Nonetheless, their genius shines through in the works that they did make. Often indirectly, these films express a sense of resistance towards the authoritarianism and social oppression of 1970s Korean society. Frustration with the status quo often extends to the films’ aesthetics, from weirdly expressionist visuals to unexpected approaches to narrative. This retrospective is a celebration of what these ambitious directors were able to achieve in the worst of circumstances, and an opportunity to tell the story of their struggles.
Assembling a retrospective on 1970s Korean cinema is not an easy task, given the fact that many prints from this era are damaged, and many of the companies that produced these films have long since gone bankrupt, making copyright issues difficult. In some cases we were forced to give up on our first choices. We also hope that audiences will understand that the prints that we do screen are sometimes not in the best of condition. Nonetheless we feel confident in the quality of the films that we have secured, and we look forward to this opportunity to shine a ray of light on one of Korean cinema's darkest and most troublesome eras.
Darcy Paquet