At the start of the 20th century, when cinema was emerging, Korea was under Japanese occupation – a violent colonisation that lasted for forty years. Only very few films from this period have survived. In her debut, Geonhee Kim takes this as a starting point to search for images that reflect what is left out of Korean historiography: in film history, the urban history of Seoul and the Yeongdeungpo district, and in the stories of women who were forced to work. With steady and clear camerawork, the film captures memories and interweaves them with traces left behind by architecture, urban interventions and conversations. You have to listen carefully to see how the scars of the Japanese rule are etched into the memories of those who lived through it.

In the narrative, the hands of a former factory worker revert to the movement of forced labour for a brief moment. A ruined factory threatens to crumble among the holes in the corrugated iron. With a touching silent text in the image, we are left to find our own voice to tell the story. “Only the holes are left, the holes in the memory,” says the film-maker as she approaches the former factory building. Poetic fragments are brought into the present as relics of another time. The film thus becomes a document and turns us viewers into witnesses who will remember.

Guest: Geonhee Kim