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imomusAlthough wintry cold has begun chilling our bodies here in Berlin, our hearts are warm this week thanks to... well, thanks to the eternally-blossoming pink flowers and ever-smiling women's faces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea!
The Asian Women's Film Festival opens in Berlin tomorrow, and Hisae and I will be interleaving its offerings at the Arsenal cinema -- which include a whole section dedicated to classic North Korean films -- with the Tokio-Shibuya season going on at the HAU theatres in Kreuzberg. On several evenings in the course of the next week we'll be shuttling from one to the other, braving lashing wind and rain, but warmed in our hearts by films like The Flower Girl, based on an opera written by Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader, himself.
Here's a song from the film:
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As I mentioned in my 7 lies about North Korea piece a couple of years back (a discussion of Christian Kracht and Eva Munz's "coffee table book" of photographs of the DPRK), Germany and Korea -- and specifically the former East Germany and North Korea -- have quite a bit in common. They share an immoderate love for flowers, for standardized folk costumes, and for tightly-choreographed, stirring, collectively-voiced, totally non-funky songs filmed on spectacular mountainsides.
The curator of the Asian Women's Film Festival, Sun-ju Choi, has also helped put together an exhibition currently showing at NGBK in Kreuzberg (and my favourite Berlin art gallery, as it happens, partly because it's an artists' collective). Shared.Divided.United points out more similarities between Germany and Korea: "The two countries were both front-line states in the Cold War – and are at the same time both marked by a history of division. The manifold migration routes between Korea and Germany were characterized by complex inter-relationships and trans-border, frontier-extending activities, which are here for the first time studied against the backdrop of the Cold War. Koreans went as guest workers from South Korea to West Germany (FRG), and as students and orphans from North Korea to East Germany (GDR); East Germans went to North Korea in the overall framework of ‘developmental aid solidarity’; South Koreans in West Germany went in turn to North Korea, and North Koreans in East Germany fled to West Germany."
Works by contemporary artists like Suntag Noh (responsible for the reappropriated North Korean crowd scenes seen here) are displayed alongside historical material at NGBK. There are lots of other Asian nations -- and women directors -- represented at the Asian Women's Film Festival (the film which kicks it off is actually Malaysian), but it's the North Korean films which I expect to enjoy the most, for their otherness, their beyond-the-paleness, their beauty and resolute positivity.
A Bellflower, for instance, hymns the importance of "loyalty, solidarity and commitment to the country" and contains "exhortations to put the common good above personal ambition... a recurrent theme of North Korean society guided by the “Juche” principle of self-reliance."
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Let's end with Let's Defend Socialism, a song "from the early 90s about the Korean people's resolve to defend socialism". According to YouTube user DPRKradio, "this song was released shortly after the betrayal of socialism in the former Soviet Union by the traitor Gorbachev."
Like the music, the comments beneath it are harmonious; refreshingly free of the usual OMFG WTF LOL kneejerk Web 2.0 cynicism, this video has inspired YouTube users the world over (but all on the same day) to lift their voices as one and proclaim: "The Democratic People´s Republic of Korea is raising the banner of socialism to new heights in the 21st century under the Songun leadership of KIM JONG IL" and "long live ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF DPRK, HER LEADER KIM JONG II, AND THE BEAUTIFUL VALUES, TRADITIONS AND CELEBRATION OF LIFE, OF HER PEOPLE"!
The Asian Women's Film Festival opens in Berlin tomorrow, and Hisae and I will be interleaving its offerings at the Arsenal cinema -- which include a whole section dedicated to classic North Korean films -- with the Tokio-Shibuya season going on at the HAU theatres in Kreuzberg. On several evenings in the course of the next week we'll be shuttling from one to the other, braving lashing wind and rain, but warmed in our hearts by films like The Flower Girl, based on an opera written by Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader, himself.
Here's a song from the film:
[Error: unknown template video]
As I mentioned in my 7 lies about North Korea piece a couple of years back (a discussion of Christian Kracht and Eva Munz's "coffee table book" of photographs of the DPRK), Germany and Korea -- and specifically the former East Germany and North Korea -- have quite a bit in common. They share an immoderate love for flowers, for standardized folk costumes, and for tightly-choreographed, stirring, collectively-voiced, totally non-funky songs filmed on spectacular mountainsides.
The curator of the Asian Women's Film Festival, Sun-ju Choi, has also helped put together an exhibition currently showing at NGBK in Kreuzberg (and my favourite Berlin art gallery, as it happens, partly because it's an artists' collective). Shared.Divided.United points out more similarities between Germany and Korea: "The two countries were both front-line states in the Cold War – and are at the same time both marked by a history of division. The manifold migration routes between Korea and Germany were characterized by complex inter-relationships and trans-border, frontier-extending activities, which are here for the first time studied against the backdrop of the Cold War. Koreans went as guest workers from South Korea to West Germany (FRG), and as students and orphans from North Korea to East Germany (GDR); East Germans went to North Korea in the overall framework of ‘developmental aid solidarity’; South Koreans in West Germany went in turn to North Korea, and North Koreans in East Germany fled to West Germany."
Works by contemporary artists like Suntag Noh (responsible for the reappropriated North Korean crowd scenes seen here) are displayed alongside historical material at NGBK. There are lots of other Asian nations -- and women directors -- represented at the Asian Women's Film Festival (the film which kicks it off is actually Malaysian), but it's the North Korean films which I expect to enjoy the most, for their otherness, their beyond-the-paleness, their beauty and resolute positivity.
A Bellflower, for instance, hymns the importance of "loyalty, solidarity and commitment to the country" and contains "exhortations to put the common good above personal ambition... a recurrent theme of North Korean society guided by the “Juche” principle of self-reliance."
[Error: unknown template video]
Let's end with Let's Defend Socialism, a song "from the early 90s about the Korean people's resolve to defend socialism". According to YouTube user DPRKradio, "this song was released shortly after the betrayal of socialism in the former Soviet Union by the traitor Gorbachev."
Like the music, the comments beneath it are harmonious; refreshingly free of the usual OMFG WTF LOL kneejerk Web 2.0 cynicism, this video has inspired YouTube users the world over (but all on the same day) to lift their voices as one and proclaim: "The Democratic People´s Republic of Korea is raising the banner of socialism to new heights in the 21st century under the Songun leadership of KIM JONG IL" and "long live ALL OF THE PEOPLE OF DPRK, HER LEADER KIM JONG II, AND THE BEAUTIFUL VALUES, TRADITIONS AND CELEBRATION OF LIFE, OF HER PEOPLE"!
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Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-14 07:20 pm (UTC)"Critics such as Andrew Keen argue that Web 2.0 has created a cult of digital narcissism and amateurism, which undermines the notion of expertise by allowing anybody, anywhere to share (and place undue value upon) their own opinions about any subject and post any kind of content regardless of their particular talents, knowledgeability, credentials, biases or possible hidden agendas. He states that the core assumption of Web 2.0, that all opinions and user-generated content are equally valuable and relevant is misguided, and is instead 'creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity: uninformed political commentary, unseemly home videos, embarrassingly amateurish music, unreadable poems, essays and novels,' also stating that Wikipedia is full of 'mistakes, half truths and misunderstandings'."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0#Characteristics
One important, defining feature of the knee-jerk cynicism of OMG WTF Web 2.0 that this comment does not mention explicitly, but which is clearly covered by the categories it does mention, is the solemn dictum issued by OMG-WTF-ers that one must attempt to deflect all criticism of or potentially critical questions about nations, peoples, systems, cultures, etc. other than the US or those things taken to be epitomized by the US by pointing out that the US or that which it is taken to epitomize has done or was purported to have done this or that supposedly bad thing. Furthermore, it is to be understood in the realms of OMG WTF Web 2.0 that not only do such attempts at deflection constitute more than sufficient exoneration of any nation, people, system, culture, etc. other than the US or those things taken to be epitomized by the US that might come under scrutiny for any reason whatsoever. They also constitute unassailable grounds for celebrating and holding up as a model any nation, people, system, culture, etc. other than the US or that which the US is taken to epitomize.
Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-14 08:17 pm (UTC)Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-14 09:10 pm (UTC)Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-15 03:25 am (UTC)Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-15 02:18 am (UTC)it's akin to what post-structuralism/deconstruction did to the self-important ivory tower types in academia; it's decentered their precious hierarchical structures of knowledge/power.
Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-15 06:30 am (UTC)“Highbrow” culture has subtleties to teach too… and even though I don’t believe “civilization” depends upon that, a good democracy does require heavy critical education—people need not only be informed, but trained to think more critically. Otherwise, we might get something like that portrayed in the film “Idiocracy”—where a pro-wrestler was elected “president of America”:
Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-15 06:46 am (UTC)i still detect a whiff of elitism from you, in that it's not "that" we know, but "what" we know...
Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-15 07:35 am (UTC)Apologies for seeming elitism… I liked a few episodes of “Baywatch” and have watched some pro wrestling matches too. I think the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wife is Maria Shriver is telling though.
I guess my thesis would be that there can be a difference between education and propaganda.
Re: Life in the World of OMG WTF Web 2.0
Date: 2009-10-16 04:47 am (UTC)i'm just watching the chomsky doc manufacturing consent now on youtube
Re: Twitter saves the Guardian
Date: 2009-10-15 07:43 am (UTC)The Guardian's editor thanks Twitter for helping cave in an attempt to gag it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/oct/14/trafigura-fiasco-tears-up-textbook
One day the t-shirts will read "Blogs Right, Tweets Left"