Together We’re Willing to Take Any Risk
“There are two prejudices in pre-existing cinema: filmmaking is a male job and the movie should be fun. We, as outsiders, will break these biases.”
—Han Ok-hee, 1974
In 1974, a group of students from the prestigious Ewha Womans University in Seoul formed South Korea’s first feminist film collective, Kaidu Club. Shepherded by the group’s de-facto president Han Ok-hee, the other members—who participated with varying degrees of involvement over the Club’s five years of existence—also included the painter Kim Jeom-seon, as well as academics and artists Lee Jeong-hee, Han Soon-ae, Jeong Myo-sook, and Wang Gyu-won. As the “Club” designation might suggest, the group was committed to both the promotion and production of experimental cinema, which was still in its domestic infancy. Both elements informed the Club’s official debut in July 1974, when they organized the country’s first experimental film festival on the roof of Seoul’s Shinsegae department store and presented their own works alongside films by peers Kim Jum-sun, Yi Jeong-hee, and the American Ed Emshwiller. A similar model was replicated, with even more emphasis on the Club’s own productions, in the 1975 and 1977 iterations of this short-lived but important event.
Kaidu Club was one of several collectively minded constellations of artists and filmmakers that populated South Korea’s cultural landscape in the late ’60s and, the 1969 short often considered South Korea’s first experimental film.) More dedicated film collectives included the early trendsetters Cine-Poem and Kaidu Club affiliates Moving Image Research Group, who presented early projects by Han in 1973, the year before the official formation of Kaidu Club and the experimental film festival.
