“평양 로케이션”, 평양에서 영화를 배우는 사람들

Abstract

This paper attempted to find a contact zones with North Korea that bypasses division system and ideological confrontation. This approach is a theory to verify the possibility that multiscalar and multilateral contact zones will re-recognize movement and meeting with North Korea as exchange and coexistence on behalf of North Korea, which implies taboos and hostility. This is an inquiry into the dynamics carried out by communities and networks that transcend the division system and ideological confrontation that North Korea has restricted so far, and through this, it is a journey to capture other moments of standardized memory of the inter-Korean border. “Pyongyang Location” intervenes in different memories of the boundaries surrounding North Korea in the process of reproducing North Korea’s past and present, as well as the contact itself for film production. These films, which were called overseas joint films such as Aim High in Creation! and Comrade Kim Goes Flying in the 2010s are in fact linked to the establishment of multiscalar and multilateral contact zones with North Korea imagined by foreign filmmakers in the 2000s. Considering the activities of Nicholas Bonner, who actively participated in this, the contact zone was the base for forming North Korea’s film language network through transnational communities such as film festivals and biennales, which have relatively less interference between countries. In this way, Pyongyang Location was a device of reproduction that opened at least a new battlefield about it, imagining the boundaries surrounding North Korea as a contact zone for coexistence beyond division and control.