"Regards comparés": Koreas, thwarting destinies

Since 2012, Inalco has been a partner of the Jean Rouch Festival, screening films from the "Regards comparés" selection in the auditorium. This year, screenings will be held from November 25 to 28 on the theme of Korea. All screenings will be followed by a debate with filmmakers and experts.
Un homme se tient debout dans un champ d'herbe, un bâton à la main. On voit un troupeau au loin.
Affiche du film "Résonances" © Jean-Julien Pous‎

So far, so near

2pm - 2:15pm

  • Introduction

2:15pm - 4:15pm

  • Resonances, France | 2016 | 29 min | vostf
    A film by: Jean-Julien Pous (France)
    Production and distribution : Jean-Julien Pous (France)

Two atypical peasant women. One is a diver, or haenyeo, on Jeju Island in Korea. The other is a French shepherdess making goat cheese in a hamlet in the Pyrenees. They reveal themselves in their relationship with the animal world, the earth, the air and the liquid element. The ghostly mist absorbs the animals and their master, while the black silhouettes of the divers disappear into the water. Thus the two worlds resonate.

 

  • Tourisme international, France | 2014 | 48 min | vof
    A film by : Marie Voignier (France)
    Production : Bonjour Cinéma and Centre d'Art Contemporain de Brétigny
    Distribution : Bonjour Cinéma (France)

"What to say and how to say this country (North Korea) where everything is controlled, contained, and from where nothing or almost nothing filters? One visit follows another, here a painting museum, there the President's birthplace, respectful inclinations included. [...] A journey through a country in perpetual representation, where two logics confront each other, those of wanting to see and showing: that of a power that leaves nothing to chance, and that of tourism in search of images". (Nicolas Feodoroff, FID Marseille 2014)

Discussion in the presence of Jean-Julien Pous, director, Nathalie Luca, anthropologist and president of the Comité du film ethnographique and Stéphane Thévenet, lecturer in the Korean studies department at Inalco.

Coffee and tea break - 30 minutes

16h45 - 18h15

  • Le Film du 38e parallèle, France | 2023 | 56 min | vostf
    A film by : Frank Smith (France)
    Production and distribution : Frank Smith (France)

Filming the plural, fragmented and discontinuous reality of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas, afin to question its visual potentials, and thereby exhaust all that can be seen there - at the limit of military restrictions and in a particularly tense geopolitical context. So, what can we see when we're not allowed to?

Discussion in the presence of Frank Smith, director (to be confirmed) with Nathalie Luca, anthropologist and president of the Ethnographic Film Committee and Stéphane Thévenet, lecturer in the Korean Studies Department at Inalco.

Pause - 15 minutes

18:30 - 20:30

  • Pyongyang s'amuse, France | 2019 | 72 min | vostf
    A film by : Pierre-Olivier François (France)
    Production and distribution : Alegria Productions (France)

Can you laugh in North Korea? What do they eat? When do you dance? How are vacations spent there? Drawing on material from forty trips over eight years, the director paints a portrait of this country in the throes of an urban and tourist boom. This insight into the daily lives of North Koreans helps us to understand this country that the whole world considers an anomaly.

Discussion in the presence of Pierre-Olivier François, journalist and director, and Patrick Maurus, professor emeritus of Korean language and literature at Inalco (to be confirmed) with Nathalie Luca, anthropologist and president of the Ethnographic Film Committee and Stéphane Thévenet, lecturer in the Korean Studies Department at Inalco.