
Activism and Post-activism
Korean Documentary Cinema, 1981--2022
Jihoon Kim(Author)
Oxford University Press Inc
Published on 22. March 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-0-19-776042-0 (ISBN)
Description
Activism and Post-activism: Korean Documentary Cinema, 1981--2022 is a new book about nonfiction filmmaking in the private and independent sectors of South Korean cinema and media from the early 1980s to the present day. Drawing on the methodologies of documentary studies, experimental film and video, digital cinema, local discourses on independent documentary, and the literature on the social changes of South Korea, author Jihoon Kim historicizes the formation and development of Korean independent documentary in close dialogue with South Korea's social movements. From the 1980s mass anti-dictatorship movement to twenty-first-century labor issues, feminism, LGBT rights, environmental justice, and key events such as the Sewol Ferry disaster and the Candlelight Protests, Kim offers a comprehensive history of Korean social change documentaries in terms of their activist tradition.
At the same time, Kim also maps out the formal and aesthetic divergences of twenty-first-century Korean documentary cinema beyond the activist tradition, while also demonstrating how they have inherited and dynamically renewed the tradition's engagement with contested reality and history. Making the tripartite connections between the socio-political history of South Korea, documentary's aesthetics and politics, and the shifting institutional and technological evolution of documentary production and distribution, the book argues that what is unique about this forty-year history of South Korean documentary cinema is the intensive and compressed coevolution of its two interlocked tendencies: activism and post-activism.
At the same time, Kim also maps out the formal and aesthetic divergences of twenty-first-century Korean documentary cinema beyond the activist tradition, while also demonstrating how they have inherited and dynamically renewed the tradition's engagement with contested reality and history. Making the tripartite connections between the socio-political history of South Korea, documentary's aesthetics and politics, and the shifting institutional and technological evolution of documentary production and distribution, the book argues that what is unique about this forty-year history of South Korean documentary cinema is the intensive and compressed coevolution of its two interlocked tendencies: activism and post-activism.
Reviews / Votes
Activism and Post-activism is its breadth, making it essential reading for anyone wanting to undertake research in this field. * Christopher Corker, Asian Review of Books * All in all, the book offers rich textual and contextual analyses that would appeal to both experienced scholars and emerging researchers alike while also serving as an excellent textbook for introductory courses on Korean documentary cinema at the undergraduate and graduate levels. * Qingyang Freya Zhou, Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema * I believe Kim's book should be read by scholars and researchers in cinema and media studies, as well as Asian Studies. It could also serve as an inviting textbook for university courses in documentary studies and Korean Studies. * Ran Ma, Seoul Journal of Korean Studies *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
22 figures, 1 table
Dimensions
Height: 224 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
454 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-776042-0 (9780197760420)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
03/2024
Oxford University Press Inc
€106.64
Shipment within 15-20 days

E-Book
01/2024
OUP eBook
€24.99
Available for download

E-Book
01/2024
OUP eBook
€24.99
Available for download
Person
Jihoon Kim is Professor of Cinema and Media Studies at Chung-Ang University. He is the author of Documentary's Expanded Fields: New Media and the Twenty-First-Century Documentary (2022) and Between Film, Video, and the Digital: Hybrid Moving Images in the Post-Media Age (2016).
Author
Professor of Cinema and Media StudiesProfessor of Cinema and Media Studies, Chung-Ang University
Content
Acknowledgments Notes on Romanization and Translations Introduction: The Double Helix Part I: Activism 1. The Development of the Activist Tradition in the 1980s and 1990s 2. 21st-Century Activist Documentaries: Three Traditional Issues 3. New Social Movements and Alternative Media Practices Part II: Post-Activism 4. The Personal Turn: Domestic Ethnography, the Essay Film, Reenactment 5. The Audiovisual Turn: From hyonjang to Memoryscape 6. The Archival Turn: Memory Wars and Materialist Historiography 7. The Digital Turn: Seeking Truth Differently Epilogue Notes Index