“I was inspired by my own mother who did all the chores at sewing factories for more than 40 years and a sister who works as a clerk at a department store. I’ve always felt both feelings of pity and appreciation toward them. I hope this movie will resonate well with the public, especially the young people, arousing such questions as what the workers are doing now as well as how they lived and should live in the future.”
“I think it is important for an artist to take part in reality, continuously casting questions to the world. When art is made in many different forms, it can provide various perspectives to society and individual lives. So I’ll probably keep standing at the border and have a desire to try a genre that I haven’t done before.”
- Im Heung-soon, Silver Lion award winner at the 56th International Art Exhibition
South Korean artist Im Heung-soon speaks during a news conference at a Seoul theater on May 14, 2015, to mark his winning of the Silver Lion award at the 56th official international art exhibition of the Venice Biennale for his documentary film “Factory Complex.” (image: Yonhap)
SEOUL, May 14 (Korea Bizwire) — Five days after he won a top honor at this year’s Venice Biennale, Im Heung-soon still cannot find words for his feelings.
“Many reporters keep asking me how I feel about winning the prize. Since I never expected this to happen, more time is needed before I can answer this question,” he said during a news conference here Thursday to celebrate the win.
Im received the Silver Lion award for a promising young artist in the 56th International Art Exhibition, one of the main shows of the Venice Biennale, for his documentary film “Factory Complex” when the exhibit began Saturday.
It marked the highest honor yet received by a Korean participant in the biennale’s 120-year-old history. The 46-year-old’s winning of the award also came as a delightful surprise because the award has customarily gone to younger artists under 35.
The 108-minute film, which is expected to open in local theaters in the second half, features the struggles of female workers in Korea and other Asian countries, including Vietnam and Cambodia. It also delved into the meaning of labor, revisiting South Korea’s iconic Guro industrial complex of the 60s and 70s.
The complex was built in 1964 as the country’s first state-run industrial complex and housed labor-intensive factories of the textile and apparel with many young women working there. Many of them were exploited at that time as their working conditions were extremely poor.
Im and the film’s producer Kim Min-kyung said their movie started from this question: Where have all these people gone?
The two then interviewed some 65 people, including elderly women who worked in the complex before to get an answer to the question, although the number of interviewees who actually appeared in the film was later cut down to 22.
“We found that they are all our mothers and sisters who are close to us,” the 46-year-old director said.
(Yonhap)
