Filmmakers and Producers

Dong-won Kim

Born in Seoul, Korea in 1955
Graduated from Sogang Univ. Dept. of Mass Communication. Graduated from Graduate School of Sogang Univ., Dept. of Mass Communication. Began making documentary fi lms after working as an assistant director on commercials productions in the 1980s. Founded documentary fi lm collective P.U.R.N. Production in 1991, and has since produced and directed around thirty documentaries. Many of his works deal with people forced out of cities by redevelopment and other factors, the pro-democracy movement, and the schism between North and South Korea.

His Sangye-dong Olympics (1988) was screened at Berlin ’89 (Forum) and Yamagata ’91. Also a participant in Yamagata ’99’s New Asian Currents Special Program “Filming, Screening, Changing: Video Activism in Japan and Korea.”

His other documentaries such as Standing on the Edge of Death (1990), The 6 Days Struggle at the Myong Dong Cathedral (1997) has been presented at Berlin and Yamagata and other prestigious documentary fi lm festivals. As the former president of KIFV (The Association of Korean Independent Film and Video Makers), he has represented the history of Korean independent fi lm. In 2003, he was invited to Yamagata again as a juror of the ‘New Asian Currents’ section and there he presented his most recent fi lm, Repatriation (2003). This fi lm is the fi rst Korean documentary invited to Sundance Film Festival. A father of three adorable kids, he also teaches at the Korea National University of Art, School of Film & Multimedia.

AVAILABLE FROM TWN

Repatriation
Dong-won Kim
Producer: PURN Productions
2003, 149 min., Color, South Korea
In the spring of 1992 documentary filmmaker Dong-won Kim met Cho Chang-son and Kim Seak-hyoung, two North Koreans arrested by South Korean authorities years before. Convicted of spying for the North, they were incarcerated and spent thirty years as political prisoners. These men, and many others lik...


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TWN is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Color Congress, MOSAIC, New York Community Trust, Peace Development Fund, Ford Foundation, Golden Globe Foundation, Kolibri Foundation and individual donors.