Until the Stones Speak
- KOREA / 2022 / Korean / Color / DCP / 100 min
Director, Script, Photography, Editing: Kim Kyung-man
Sound: Koh Eun-ha Music: Oro Minkyung
Producers: Roh Eun-ji, Jeong Won-kyung
Source: Kim Kyung-man
More than seventy years have passed since the Jeju Uprising of 1948, when a large group of people in their late teens and early twenties were sent to prison on false charges. Five women, now in their nineties, have slowly and with heavy hearts begun to recount the horrors inflicted on them, as a retrial aimed at restoring their honor is held. The women still bear the physical and psychological wounds of their experiences: the killings of thousands of islanders, the burnings of villages, the bitter experience of prison. The power of an incalculable number of existences and suffering lay behind words of memories that could not be spoken until now but will never be forgotten, blending into Juju’s landscape for all eternity, bringing back gruesome scenes of that time. (SA)
[Director’s Statement] Reflection on the past history is for the present and the future. What the state did in Jeju April 3rd Uprising and Massacre could not be justified for any reason, but the perception that has justified it still continues. If the upcoming future is a serious problem for everyone, can it be solved without awareness of the past history? Wouldn’t it be too absurd to hope that over time, we can naturally become a better society without reflection? The current difficulty may be a very natural consequence of not reflecting on the wrong perception. Nevertheless, like the grandmothers in this film, people continue to live in a tough world. It may be the same as resistance in itself that they have experienced such a terrible thing and lived in an era that is hard to imagine now.
Kim Kyung-manRecently, he has been making independent documentary films because he believes that historical awareness is an important issue. His short films include Things that We Shouldn’t Do (2003, YIDFF 2005), The Fool Doesn’t Catch a Cold (2008, YIDFF 2009), and Beep (2014). His feature films include An Escalator in World Order (2011) and People Passing By (2014), with this being his third.