South Korea
Jeon Soo Il
"I borrowed the money from the bank. Most of the members of the crew were non-professionals from Pusan. It was a very tough production." Jeon Soo Ill is describing the trials he faced in makingL'echo du vent en moi which screens in Un Certain Regard today. The budget was tight (around $70,00) Somehow, 60% of the original footage ended up under-exposed. The director is clearly accustomed to such teething problems. As he puts it, 'it's very difficult to produce a film in Pusan, far away from Seoul, where the majority of Korean movies are made.'
L'echo du vent en moi is the second part in a trilogy examining childhood, youth and old age. Its protagonist is a young writer working on a book based on his dreams. 'I wanted to show how this man gradually realises that publishing the book of his dreams is pointless. He accepts that his dreams should remain part of his own inner life, not put on paper.'
With its oblique approach to memory and identity, the film runs against the grain of most mainstream Korean cinema. 'The central idea of the story is time,' the director explains, 'nobody can change the flow of time. But the physical flow of time which man feels directly does not always accord with the time flowing in our consciousness.'
Jeon Soo Ill is an academic as well as a director. Since 1993, he has been teaching film at the University of Kyungsung. He produced this film himself, but through necessity not choice. 'There are a lot of subjects we could make films about: Korea is fascinating from a social, historical and political point of view, but directors struggle to express their own ideas. Korean producers always expect us to make commercial films.' Geoffrey Macnab
Prod/Scr/Dir: Jeon Soo Ill
Ph: Hwang Chul Hyun
Art Dir: Lee Jeong Ae
Ed: Park Gok Ji
Cast: Choe Jae Hyun, Kim Myung Jo
Running Time: 40minutes
Intl Sales: to be confirmed
