Soon-Mi
Yoo’s film and video work includes
"ISAHN" (2004), "ssitkim: talking
to the dead" (2004), "faith"
(1999), "Do Roo" (Circling Back, 1994).
Soon-Mi Yoo’s films have been screened
at the Flaherty Seminar, Academie Schloss Solitude
(Stuttgart, Germany), the Lincoln Center, New
York Video Festival (New York), the Pittsburgh
Filmmakers (Pittsburgh, PA), the Visual Studies
Workshop (Rochester, NY), Seattle International
Film Festival, Hawaii International Film Festival,
Northwest Film and Video Festival (Portland,
OR), and Seoul Short Film Festival (Seoul, Korea).
Yoo’s most recent video, ISAHN, was premiered
at the New York Film Festival, “Views
from the Avant-Garde.” Her video, ssitkim:
talking to the dead was screened at the International
Film Festival Rotterdam in February 2005 and
was screened at the 17th Onion City Experimental
Film and Video Festival (Chicago, IL) in June
2005 and at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston,
TX) in July 2005.
Soon-Mi
Yoo’s installation work, "seeking
saf" is part of the International Center
of Photography’s traveling exhibit and
catalogue Only Skin Deep (Harry N Abrams, NY,
2003). Her installations have also been exhibited
in the Silver Eye Center for Photography (Pittsburgh,
PA), Photography Institute (New York, NY), Cannon
House Office Building (Washington, DC), Photographic
Resource Center (Boston, MA), Boston Center
for Arts, Work Gallery (San Jose, CA), Guild
Hall Museum (East Hampton, NY).
Her
photographs of the Comfort Women (victims of
sexual slavery in the Japanese “rape camps”
during WW II) survivors are published in “Comfort
Women Speak: Testimony from Sex Slaves of the
Japanese Military (Holmes & Meier, NY, 2000).”
She
received a residency fellowship from the Center
for Photography at Woodstock (2004), the MacDowell
Colony (2001) and the Corporation of Yaddo (2000).
She is a recipient of a fellowship from the
American Photography Institute (1999). She is
a recipient of The Corcoran Alumni Award for
Excellence (1997) and the National Asian American
Telecommunications Association Grant (1994).
faith
13 minutes,1999
faith
is a story of two women, myself and Faith
Kim Taylor, who were both born in Korea and
separately found their home in America. In
faith, the stories of two women are interwoven
to tell of loss, longing, and love.
Faith was born during the Korean War between
a Korean mother and a black UN soldier. Her
Korean mother left her when she was three
months old. When she was six years old, Faith
was adopted from a Korean orphanage by an
single black mother in America. faith grew
out of my trip to Korea in 1998. I brought
back the documents that revealed to Faith
the name of her Korean mother. I found my
mother’s practice book after her funeral
in 1996. She had a stroke thirteen years ago
and had practiced handwriting with her left
hand. The segment she wrote over and over
was from a psalm in the Bible. It was a practice
of her faith.
ssitkim:
talking to the dead 35 minutes, 2004
ssitkim:
talking to the dead is based on a significant,
but little known aspect of the Vietnam War:
the role of 320,000 Korean soldiers who fought
for the United States from 1965 to 1973. In
particular, the film examines the legacy of
mass civilian killings committed by the Korean
forces that resulted in the deaths of over
5,000 Vietnamese civilians.
While
the film relates the story of the Korean army’s
involvement in the Vietnam War and its mercenary
nature, it also examines the way in which
the killings permeate the present in both
countries: how, more than thirty years later,
the peasants in Central Vietnam continue to
cope with the aftermath of these events, and
how some Koreans have begun a process of atonement
for the deaths their soldiers caused.
ssitkim: talking to the dead investigates
the layers of personal and historical memory
by reexamining the audio-visual evidence of
history. The commingling of archival and contemporary
footage in a fragmented chapter structure
is at times more analogous to an essay or
poetic form than to traditional modes of representation
in nonfiction film. As each “chapter”
progresses, the hidden connections in the
peripheral history that is not evident in
the official historical narrative slowly emerge.
ISAHN
16:30 minutes, 2004
ISAHN
is a story of displacement. It’s about
a place one cannot go back to anymore. In October
5, 2001, I heard TV news that Mr. Chung, an
82-year-old man originally from North Korea,
killed himself after failing to get into the
lottery to take part in the family reunion and
meet with his family in North Korea. The split
screen in ISAHN is from the stereoscopes at
Imjingak, which is located 30 kilometers from
Seoul and borders North Korea. Tourists and
displaced North Koreans can go and drop a few
coins in the stereoscopes to look at the government
sanctioned photographs of North Korea.
The
images from the stereoscopes are mixed with
contemporary footage (shot in 1999) of Burmese
refugee camps around Mae Sot, Thailand, in
which inhabitants are forced to relocate to
yet another anonymous site.For those who are
not allowed to go back home, the sights of
exile are just ersatz landscapes. Sometimes
they may offer consolation. Oftentimes they
work as hindrance. Many would say, “When
I close my eyes, I can still see my hometown
so vividly.”
