Cinema
Crossroads of Youth
청춘의 십자로
Ahn Jong-hwa · 1934
Synopsis
Yeong-bok leaves his village for Gyeongseong, colonial Seoul, after his fiancée has been seduced and then abandoned by Myeong-gu. In the city, he earns his living and meets Gye-sun, who works at a petrol station and looks after her sick father. His younger sister Yeong-ok, who has come too, finds work in a bar, where she meets Gae-cheol, a friend of Myeong-gu and a predator of naive girls. The two young women soon fall under the sway of these men.
Context
The film, its author's third as director according to the Giornate del Cinema Muto, was photographed by Yi Myeong-u. Thought lost, it resurfaced in 2007, when the family of a former cinema operator handed nine reels of nitrate negative to the Korean Film Archive; eight were restored, the ninth being too degraded. The Korea Times calls it the oldest surviving Korean film. It was shown from 2008 with a narrator, musicians and singers, as in the silent era, and in 2012 became a registered cultural property.
Who it is for
A silent film of seventy-five minutes, to be seen in the restored version, with English intertitles, or at an accompanied screening.
Prizes and reception
Screened with live accompaniment at the Busan Festival in 2008, then in New York, London and Mexico, according to the Korea Times.
Sources for this page 5
The pages consulted to check this page.