Synopsis

Through the death of my great uncle on November, 2001; I learned more about the complicated stories of my maternal grandmother’s family. In the small village where my grandmother’s family lived, there were feuds in class and ideology.
When I accidentally discovered the diaries of my great uncle who was mentally ill, I unexpectedly learned about my family's secret history. The small mountain village in South Jeonla Province where my mother's family lived was nursing the wounds from conflicts of class, ideology as well as from the displacement of family members in South and North Koreas, and even in Japan. It turned out that the history of my family contained all the tragedies of modern Korean history which I have only known through textbooks.
The film contains very private stories and it will be interesting to see the response of the villager and their families.

 

Director's Statement

My granduncle passed away. He was a mental patient and, as a child, I used to find him terrifying.

One day, shortly after his death, I coincidently came across his diaries. Some 40 years worth of diaries, enough to fill up a couple of boxes, yet his diaries were filled simply with notes on sermons, hymns, bible readings and prayers. "What on earth made him that way?" I wondered. Soon, this question threw me into the crucible of Korea's modern history.

Behind my granduncle's suffering was my family's leftist history, which I had never heard about before. The fact that the kind of history I had seen only in movies or novels had been existent so silently yet so close to me came as a total shock
I felt so much for my mother who has been hiding her family’s history for fear of her children being branded as the descendents of communists.
Though my relatives did not fancy talking, I began to ask them about the family history.

My mother's hometown was always divided, which I had never realized before, by a road into upper and lower villages, and has been with deep wounds for over 50 years.
It struck me as a microcosm of the recent tragedy of the entire Korean peninsula and I felt compelled to record the story of the village and my family on film.

I do not have the confidence to make a film that delves into grave issues such as discovering the truth of history, or the truth behind ideological conflict.
I focused my interest on the pain of my mother and grandmother, who lived with these secrets in their hearts, being afraid of mentioning them. I simply wanted to hear stories about real people who had suffered in silence as members of families branded "a Red communist."
I believe in stories having the power to heal Through this film, I thought that perhaps the hard knot inside these wounded people's hearts would begin to unravel and help them breathe more comfortably.

There are still people who judge others based on their ideology today. What is worse-there are plenty of people still living in fear as victims of history in many parts of the world.
A documentary may not have either the power or all the answers to change everything in this stifling world. It may suggest, however, to some of those people, once caught in the whirlpool of tragic history and deeply scarred, to lay down their burdens and have their pain eased somehow.
It is my hope that this film can bring them a little bit of consolation.

 

Biography

 

Staff

Producer      
Cinematographer          
Editor