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theme: nirvana.n.01
Park Chan-Kyong’s otherworldly film Belated Bosal primarily follows two women as they navigate their way up a spectral mountain and through what appears to be a history museum or nuclear disaster bunker. They converge to jointly perform a funeral rite in a shipping container, which a group of artisans temporarily convert into a makeshift Buddhist temple, replete with traditional paintings. Shot in crisp and densely detailed black-and-white negative, each frame is lit by the format’s spooky incandescence: shadows are white and the sun is black, as if the world were being viewed through X-ray, infrared camera or a plutonium-sensitive film.
Artist and filmmaker Park Chan-kyong was born in Seoul under the reign of Park Chung-hee, whose authoritarian rule transformed South Korea from an impoverished, war-torn country into what the artist describes as a ‘militaristic, repressive, modern state.’ The shadows of Japanese occupation and the Korean War loomed large over the period, driving the call for nationalism and productivity...