Director: Im Heung-soon

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Birthday: 1969-05-10
Biography: M Heung-soon was born in Seoul in 1969. Currently, IM is working between Seoul and Jeju as a visual artist and filmmaker. His works deconstruct and expand the genres of visual art and film. IM has been organizing and producing works in diverse forms, crossing the areas of documentary film as contemporary art and public art, individual and collaborative works, exhibition space and theater, and sites of everyday life. IM started a career as an artist in 1998 and held a total of sixteen solo exhibitions. His major solo exhibitions include Reincarnation (MoMA PS1, 2015), Things that Do Us Part (MMCA Hyundai Motor Series, MMCA, 2017), Ghost Guide (The Page Gallery, 2019), Title Match: IM Heung-soon vs. Omer Fast «Cut!» (Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, 2022) and Memories Showers Seas (Jeju4·3Peace Memorial Hall, 2023). IM has also been invited to a number of international exhibitions and film festivals, including the Gwangju Biennale in 2002 and 2010, the Sharjah Biennale and Venice Biennale in 2015, the Taipei Biennale in 2016, and Carnegie International in 2018. As a filmmaker, IM released eight feature films, starting with Jeju Prayer (2012). He received the Silver Lion Award at the 2015 Venice Biennale for Factory Complex (2014) and the Audience Winner at the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival for Ryeohaeng (2016). His works are in the collection of major Korean and international art museums such as the MMCA (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art), Seoul, Centre Pompidou in Paris, LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art), Stavanger Art Museum (Stavanger, Norway), in the Sharjah Art Foundation in the United Arab Emirates.

Known for

Factory Complex

The drastic economic development in South Korea once surprised the rest of the world. However, behind of it was an oppression the marginalized female laborers had to endure. The film invites us to the lives of the working class women engaged in the textile industry of the 1960s, all the way through the stories of flight attendants, cashiers, and non-regular workers of today. As we encounter the vista of female factory workers in Cambodia that poignantly resembles the labor history of Korea, the form of labor changes its appearance but the essence of the bread-and-butter question remains still.
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7.8
Factory+Complex
Factory Complex

2015

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Good Light, Good Air

The title Good Light, Good Air is oddly paradoxical. Keenly working at the point where his artistic identity and persistent attention on modern Korean history meet, director Im in this film focused on where the history of oppression and struggle intersect between Gwangju and Buenos Aires. In both cities, a great number of people who fought against the dictatorship were slaughtered and disappeared. The people of both societies still live with that trauma. When the testimonies of the victims of the two cities cross over, the film gives us chills as the eerie history of the two is very similar. Through Good Light, Good Air, director Im asks us how we will remember the past from where we stand right now.
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Good+Light%2C+Good+Air
Good Light, Good Air

2021

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Things That Do Us Part

Things That Do Us Part is a documentary that reframes the stories of three women fighters who dove into a tragic war in modern Korean history, using witness statements and reenactments.
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Things+That+Do+Us+Part
Things That Do Us Part

2019

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Jeju Prayer

Focusing on Mrs. Kang Sang-hee’s life, she lost her husband in the Jeju Uprising (March 3rd, 1948). The film views the dark-side of Jeju Island, a huge grave, which is completely opposite of the other side of the island, the famous tourist attraction. It says that the tragedy has been going on about the recent Gang-jeong village situation.
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Jeju+Prayer
Jeju Prayer

2013

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Ryeohaeng

A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled into South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival - a matter of life and death.
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Ryeohaeng