Koryo Saram the Unreliable People (2007/ 60 min)
Director David Chung will introduce and discuss the film.
In 1937, Stalin began a campaign of massive ethnic cleansing and forcibly deported everyone of Korean origin living in the coastal provinces of the Far East Russia near the border of North Korea to the unsettled steppe country of Central Asia 3700 miles away. This story of 180,000 Koreans who became political pawns during the Great Terror is the central focus of this film.
Koryo Saram (the Soviet Korean phrase for Korean person) tells the harrowing saga of survival in the open steppe country and the sweep of Soviet history through the eyes of these deported Koreans, who were designated by Stalin as an “unreliable people” and enemies of the state. Through recently uncovered archival footage and new interviews, the film follows the deportees’ history of integrating into the Soviet system while working under punishing conditions in Kazakhstan, a country which became a concentration camp of exiled people from throughout the Soviet Union.
Today, in the context of Kazakhstan’s recent emergence as a rapidly modernizing, independent state, the story of the Kazakhstani-Koreans situated within this ethnically diverse country has resonance with the experience of many Americans and how they have assimilated to form new cultures in our world of increasingly displaced people.
The 2010 Asian Film Festival and Conference is presented by:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
With generous support from: The Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts, the Henkels Visiting Lecture Series, the College of Arts and Letters, the Learning Beyond the Classroom Grant, the Office of International Student Services and Activities, the Center for Asian Studies, the Office of Research.
Cosponsored by: The Asian Pacific Alumni Board, First Year Studies, the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures, the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre and the Office of Student Affairs.
Special thanks to the Kaneb Center and the Snite Museum of Art.
Tickets are $6, $5 for faculty/staff, $4 for seniors, and $3 for all students. Buy them online or call the Ticket Office at (574) 631-2800.
For more details visit: http://kellogg.nd.edu/asianfilm