Cast

Kim KeumHwa, Boseong, Kim-Min-Ja, Ahn Baek-Seung, Yun Mink-Yung, Yoo Hee-Jong, Lee Hyaek-Young, Yang Gil-Seung

Film description

A remarkable documentary depicting Korean wedding customs and rituals. With this piece on ceremonial customs of the inhabitants of South Korea, we have a glimpse of the world of the East, of a culture marrying tradition with modernity in a fascinating way, full of colour, symbols, oriental legends and myths, but also traces of influences left by the country's recent history and contact with the West. The plot is constructed around the wedding chest of the film's title, filled with symbolic and magical objects. Urlike Ottinger explains: When a wedding chest opens, a whole world opens. A wedding chest is more than a archive box. It is something very much alive.

The Korean Wedding Chest seduces with its beautiful images which are realistic and poetic at a time, shown analytically, with a distance, but paradoxically entering the depths of the "Korean spirit" with a subtle sense of humour. The engaged couple we are watching becomes a role model or archetype and the presented rituals confirm that the eternal pattern of enchanting reality annexes the present time, is slightly modified by it, but restored and repeated in each generation.

Paulina Sieniuć

A retrospective of Brothers Quay, the authors of such films as The Institute Benjamenta and The Piano Tuner of Earthquakes, will be presented at the 10^th IFF ENH.