坎特先生的发表会 칸트씨의 발표회

Synopsis

The main character who is a photographer, discovers Kant accidentally as he is taking photographs. Intrigued by his unusual behavior, the photographer follows him around, observing him, and ends up starting a conversation with him. But he cannot empathize with the pain that Kant says he’s going through.

One day, the photographer waits for Kant, to give him photographs of him that the photographer has developed. But hearing from riot police that Kant has been arrested, and that he was a missing person from the Gwangju Democratization Struggle, the photographer turns around to go home in agony.

Notes

This was the first movie filmed with the Gwangju Democratization Struggle as its subject, but it only deals with this subject through metaphor and symbolism. (Kang So-won)

The first 16mm film to mention the Gwanju Democratization Struggle. (Kim Dong-won)

Every May, when acacias begin blooming, we are reminded of the Gwangju Struggle. But the author has only experienced the events in Gwangju second hand. Those experiences are made up of photographs from the struggle, Mangwol-dong, and the May 18th demonstrations. But those events have left indelible memories in my mind. After much time had passed since the actual events, I could watch movies which dealt with the struggle as their theme. Of those, by far the most memorable movie is director Kim Tae-young’s. Kant’s Presentation (Kantessiui-balpyohwe) (16mm, 1987). This movie, which can be said to be the first movie to deal with the Gwangju Struggle, uses the device of metaphor to tell the story of the Gwangju Struggle, which was an emotionally provocative subject at that time. It’s about “Crazy Kant,” who wanders the streets of Seoul saying gibberish that people find difficult to understand. And there is a photographer who follows him around. In the movie, the national anthem is played as Kant holds the national flag. He talks about “tradition,” “where the truck has taken them,” and the “breast that was cut off like tofu.” A still of the Gwangju Struggle and of a person being tortured, flashes by on screen. Intense images of the atrocities from the Gwangju Struggle are elegantly inserted into a framework of a simple plot, in which a photographer follows around an insane man. It shows how a tyrannical regime has thoroughly destroyed a man. The photographer holds an exhibit titled “Freedom,” with photographs that he took of Kant but Kant is discovered dead. Although we all want to empathize and share the scars from the Gwangju Struggle, like the photographer in the movie, we might all be simply standing there as outsiders, observing the pain. The movie attempts to bring that pain back to us once again.

(Cho Young-kak)(Cine 21, Issue Number 402)