When:

4:30pm-9:30 pm; 19 Sept 2024 (Thurs)

5pm-9:30 pm; 20 Sept 2024 (Fri)

Where: Lotus Hall Auditorium Theatre (Australian Centre on China in the World, Building 188A)

About the Event

We will be screening award-winning director Yang Yonghi’s trilogy of documentary films over two days, followed by a conversation and Q&A with the director on the second day. These films tell the powerful, at times heartbreaking stories of her family’s past and present lives torn between Japan, North Korea, and South Korea—a result of the entangled histories of colonialism, war, and nationalist politics. Dear Pyongyang (2005) centers on Yang’s father, a cadre of the pro-North Korea association in Japan (or “Chongryon”), who she films over a decade in trying to understand why he had sent her three brothers to North Korea. Sona, the Other Myself (2010) is about Yang’s niece, the daughter of her brother who had moved to Pyongyang in the 1970s, and Yang’s efforts to be part of her life and those of other family members in North Korea. Despite these efforts, in 2006—a year after Dear Pyongyang was released and while she was making Sona—the North Korean government banned Yang from entering the country. Yang’s most recent film Soup and Ideology (2021) is about her mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s and who reveals for the first time to Yang that she is a survivor of the Jeju uprising and massacres in 1948. Along with these memories, Yang’s mother also passes on the recipe of her delicious chicken soup, which she makes for Yang and her husband, Producer Kaoru Arai, who will also be joining us for the event. Below are the event details.

Thurs 19 Sept 2024 (4:30pm~): Screening of Dear Pyongyang (2005), followed by Sona, the Other Myself (2010). During intermission, there will be Korean food and refreshments for everyone, as well as an event-within-an-event (in Korean) with special guests Prof. Atsuhito Isozaki and Dr. Joohwee Lee, who will discuss the historical and political context of Director Yang Yonghi’s films.

Friday 20 Sept 2024 (5pm~): Screening of Soup and Ideology (2021), followed by a conversation and Q&A session with Director Yang Yong-hi, facilitated by Prof. Tessa Morris-Suzuki. Dinner (featuring Korean comfort food) will be served at the beginning of the event before the screening.

About the Director

Director Yang Yonghi is a second-generation Korean resident in Japan known as “Zainichi.” Studying filmmaking to tell the story of her family, Yang has made three documentary films and a feature film, based on her family’s tumultuous lives and dealings with history. Her first film Dear Pyongyang (2005) won a Special Jury Award at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and the 2006 Berlin Film Festival NETPAC Award, among other international awards. This was followed by her second documentary film Sona, the Other Myself (2009) and her first feature film Our Homeland (2012), which won the CICAE Art Cinema Award at the 2012 Berlin Film Festival, along with other major prizes in Japan. Her most recent film Soup and Ideology (2021) won the 2023 Kinema Junpo Best Cultural Film Award (Japan) and the 2023 Grand Bell Documentary Award (South Korea). For more, here is a short documentary about Yang made by NHK.

Discussant: Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor Emerita of Japanese History at the ANU School of Culture, History and Language. She is the author and editor of multiple books, including On the Frontiers of History: Rethinking East Asian Borders (2020), Japan's Living Politics (2020), The Living Politics of Self-Help Movements in East Asia (2018), East Asia Beyond the History Wars (2013), and Exodus to North Korea (2007). Her influential, wide-ranging scholarship spans from the past and present of the indigenous people of the Russo-Japanese border area, border controls and migration in East Asia, to national identity and ethnic minorities in Japan, and memory and reconciliation in Northeast Asia.

Hosted by ANU Korea Institute and CHL as part of Immersia: Engaging with Asia and the Pacific 2024

This event is in-person only.