To mark the occasion of a program focused on Lee’s work on October 26th, 2024 at ABB Film Festival in Byeongyeong, South Korea, we are publishing UD Editor Ruairí McCann’s Patreon-exclusive interview with the filmmaker from our June 2023 Movie Club streaming program.
by Ruairí McCann
André Bazin once wrote that with the invention of moving images, for the first time, “the image of things is likewise the image of their duration”. In this sense, cinema was born to be the mechanical, later digital, facsimile of memory; replicating the process of how in one’s own mind, a single sound, smell or image can represent a small or significant portion of one’s own lived life.
The conception, the experience and the guts of time, memory and images are the chief concerns of filmmaker Lee Jangwook. Using the medium of 16mm film and hand-operated techniques of both the editing and the darkrooms, he creates energetic time capsules which home in on and rewire the entwined functions of cinema and memory, to reveal not only things recalled but also the subtleties and outright mysteries of that complex engine we call remembrance.
McCann: I think a good place to start would be with your introduction to filmmaking. Could you tell us about how you first became interested in working in this medium?
Lee: I started working with film while majoring in filmmaking at the Art Institute of Chicago. Of course, I had experience with making short films before that, but it was a completely different approach because it was not a media approach. My experiences in Chicago made me accept film as a material rather than a means. I was fascinated by the unique and mysterious properties of film.
It seems that one of those mysterious properties of film which your work explores is the symbiotic relationship between the medium and memory. In your films, the act of remembering is strikingly expressed as, on the one hand, a transitory, and an often abstract experience, and also an entity which carries a very tactile, physical presence. Could you elaborate further on this interest in memory?
I think memory behavior resembles the characteristics of film. The film changes all the time. It changes continuously after you create the final print. The properties of the fluid film also drags the memory action in an unexpected direction. In all three works, the final image cannot be seen during the editing process. In the case of surface of memory, memory on surface, it was done by arranging four layers using a synchronizer. In the printing process, the four layers merge, where there is a possibility of different combinations through differences in the amount or color of light. I saw the actual finished print for the first time in the theater. In the case of hibernation, editing and printing are not distinguished. This is the result of hanging the film sources on the darkroom wall and improvising editing and printing on the print film. Choice and exclusion in the darkroom resemble that of memory and oblivion. Of course, even in this case, the image could be seen after the final phenomenon.
In 2004, you founded a handmade film lab in Seoul called Space Cell, could you tell us more about the origins of the lab, the work done there and the function it serves? You’ve also been heavily involved with other initiatives and groups, such as the EXiS Film Festival, so it’s clear that it’s very important to you to put time and effort into making not just your own work but into building up a film community and to grow opportunities for other artists. Could you talk about this communitarian aspect of your practice, where does it come from and why is it important?
I came back to Korea after graduating in 1999. At that time, surface of memory, memory on surface was screened at the Seoul Independent Film Festival, but the response at that time was not favorable. Sometimes there was an aggressive reaction from the audience. The experience led to concerns about the conditions of education and screening of experimental films. In 2004, I opened Space Cell and began conducting film workshops, and some of the participants remained afterwards to develop their work. In the same year, the EXiS Film Festival started, and Space Cell also functioned as a screening space. Although it did not have a big goal, a kind of community was formed as these practices continued for more than 20 years. I don’t have an idea of an ideal community, but if something happens when people meet through films and experimental films, I just participate in the process with interest.
I would like to draw this interview to a close by asking what are you working on at the moment? Is there a particular project that you wouldn’t mind discussing and/or an aspect of filmmaking which is currently the focus of your attention?
I am currently working on a film titled Changgyeong. Changgyeong is the name of an old palace. The palace was converted into a zoo during the Japanese colonial period, to insult the Korean royal family and people. This zoo remained as a zoo for a long time even after independence, and it was a place of memories for me as a child. The zoo has now been relocated and the former palace restored. I am interested in the discord between my personal memories and public records, the relationship between humans and things, the relationship between history and things, etc. The methodology mainly adopts the contact things directly on film materials. Changgyeong has been presented several times in the form of a performance and exhibition titled as Surface, Memory, Oblivion. Currently, I am working on it in the form of a movie and will finish it this year, if possible.
Ruairí McCann is an Irish writer, curator, illustrator and musician, Belfast born and based but raised in Sligo. He has contributed to various publications, such as photogénie, aemi online, Screen Slate, MUBI Notebook, Documentary Magazine, Film Hub NI and Sight & Sound. [Twitter]
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