Summer Days in Bloom
KOREA / 2012 / Korean / Color / Blu-ray / 75 min
Directors, Photography, Editing, Producers: Roh Eun-ji, Go U-jung
Source: Roh Eun-ji
After hearing that their friend Gabriel had found a boyfriend, the directors begins recording the couple’s life together. Ten years ago, after Gabriel was diagnosed with HIV, he came out and began to actively engage in activism. However, his melancholic partner Du-yeol felt that his life had ended after contracting the virus. The HIV causes changes in their hearts and bodies, which come and go like waves, entering and exiting the couple’s lives. The camera does its best to capture them as gay men, as people who have come out as HIV positive, and as beings who desire love.
[Director’s Statement] It seems like love, or unlike love, as they live together in the secluded space of their small rooftop room, caught in a cycle of meeting and parting.
We watch over this couple with their same wounds but different desires. We have many questions.
Can they love each other?
Can they be together?
Can they begin anew?
(From the left)Roh Eun-ji & Go U-jung
Roh Eun-ji and Go U-jung graduated from the Department of Broadcasting Studies at Korea National University for the Arts in the same year. While in their third year at university, they were on the same team in their documentary workshop class, and made their first film Over the Border (2008). At that time, they wanted to focus on the stories of people who had become targets for unjust social surveillance and control, and they found this in the lives of people infected with HIV. They met Gabriel while working on Over the Border. Charmed by his life, they chose him as their subject for Summer Days in Bloom (2012), their second documentary.
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