Iron Age
KOREA / 2013 / Korean / Color / Blu-ray / 38 min
Director, Photography, Editing, Source: Jung Ji-yoon
A daughter struggles to make a film. A mother criticizes this daughter for exposing her and the family. Yet, the daughter harbors something inside that is beyond a simple desire to incite anger. Her mother experienced the “Iron Age,” throwing herself into democratic struggles in a time when authorities raged with incredible violence. She still carries scars that have not healed. The director retraces her own memories of a childhood spent in absence of her activist mother, who was imprisoned after the Gwangju Massacre. As mother and daughter crystallize their various memories in fragments of words, a portrait of the mother and her time emerges.
[Director’s Statement] A woman has a hole in her heart. Something soft and invisible may flow from that hole at any time, and for any reason. That makes her life unpleasant. So she starts searching for the reason for why it is there.
Two people died during the production of this documentary.
One of them was not close to me, but I have some feelings for her.
The other was very close to me. Actually, she was me.
I needed to find some consolation for them, and for myself. That’s why I had to make this documentary.
Maybe this documentary is a eulogy dedicated to children.
Maybe this is an apology for helplessness.
Jung Ji-yoon
Born in 1985, Jung Ji-yoon is a documentary filmmaker. Her short-form work includes display_UNCANNY (2011) and the 8mm Be My Kind (2011), which screened at the 37th Seoul Independent Film Festival and the 5th Film Festival for Women’s Rights by invitation. Her most recent documentary is Iron Age (2013), produced with support from KOFIC, which was screened at Seoul Independent DOcumentary Film Festival 2013 and in the Asian Shorts film competition at the 15th Woman’s Film Festival in Seoul.
Interview