Film Goes On amid the COVID-19 Pandemic!
The 22nd JEONJU IFF, Special Focus: Corona, New Normal
? Introducing 11 domestic and international titles that capture the changes seen around the globe due to COVID-19.
? Programmer Moon Seok says, “We selected timely films that encompass the lives and the pains of the COVID-19 era.”
While the whole world is suffering from COVID-19, films continued. The 22nd JEONJU International Film Festival (JEONJU IFF, Festival Director Lee Joondong) announced its full programming on April 6, and Special Focus: Corona, New Normal, a section capturing the changes around the world due to COVID-19, is gaining much attention from the press and the audience.
Special Focus is a section that presents the most important topic of the year, and this year’s theme is COVID-19. In this year’s Special Focus section, a total of 11 domestic and international films will be introduced, allowing us to look back at the COVID-19 pandemic which has seriously affected the lives of everyone around the world starting from last year, and even to this day.
The first film to note is Coronation, a vivid documentary on the origin of the coronavirus, Wuhan, China. It’s by Ai Weiwei, a world-renowned Chinese artist, human rights activist, and documentary filmmaker. Ai Weiwei completed his film by collecting and editing the videos from documentary filmmakers and the general public active in Wuhan. Another Chinese film in the section is The Ark by Wei Dan, an independent filmmaker based in Beijing. The Ark depicts an ordinary Chinese family who must choose between keeping a critically ill elderly alive or letting them go.
The First Wave. Milan in the time of Covid-19 is a documentary made by 57 filmmakers from Milan, Italy. This film also captures the landscape of the pandemic era in a unique way. It’s a mosaic of the filmmakers’ gazes as they try to find a new meaning in Milan’s changing times as a state of emergency is declared under COVID-19. With the Street Screening, citizens in Jeonju will be able to relate even more to the daily lives of those who are living in a city that’s locked down due to COVID-19. Mika Kaurismaki’s Gracious Night shows three men in a bar on the verge of going bankrupt, also during a lockdown in Helsinki, Finland, while Totally Under Control is a highly anticipated documentary that discloses the collapse of the public health system under Trump’s incompetent and corrupt administration.
Along with the 5 international titles, 6 Korean films will be introduced in Special Focus: Corona, New Normal. The first film to note is At The Surisol Underwater Lab, a new film by director Kim Ayoung who showed Porosity Valley 2: Tricksters’ Plot in the Korean Competition for Shorts section last year. Set in the future when marine plants become the main source of energy due to climate change and resource depletion, it tells the story of Sohila, a researcher who works at the Surisol Underwater Lab. Lee Yun-ji and Park Jae-beom’s Corner of the Room is an animation that captures the daily life of a thirty-year-old Jihye who was job hunting but ends up spending her days in her room due to COVID-19. There is also Kim Kyujin’s Sweet Home, which is about having a child disappear in his home, a place one tends to believe is the safest of all. Jeon Jemin’s A Delivering Life is about a delivery man named Sungjoon in the time of COVID-19 when delivery services become more demanding. Je Hwangyu’s Congratulations! which depicts the pandemic’s scenery where you can only meet people virtually, and Ko Sun-young’s MIJU, which is about the inability to recognize each other due to the masks, are also included in this section.
While explaining the intentions behind this section, programmer Moon Seok said, “It’s not an exaggeration to say that we all lived in the era of COVID-19 last year. In the midst of this situation, we selected timely films that encompass the lives and the pains of the COVID-19 era in Special Focus: Corona, New Normal.”
Meanwhile, in response to the concerns of another COVID-19 outbreak, JEONJU IFF is planning to conduct the film festival with social distancing guidelines that are half a level higher than the current social distancing level. Online Q&As and master classes with overseas guests will be conducted through video calls or via pre-recorded clips, while the offline screenings held at 17 theaters around Jeonju Film Street will operate at 30% of the full capacity.
The 22nd JEONJU IFF held from April 29 to May 8 will hold its physical offline screenings in the Jeonju Film Street area, while the online screenings will be made available on the OTT platform, wavve. All talks and special conversations will be available on JEONJU IFF’s official YouTube channel.
