Cinema as Ritual Space

With the historical fiction Jiseul (2012), South Korean director O Meul set out to “conduct a funeral ritual.” ¹ In more tangible terms, O intended this monochrome film as a ritual and homage to the victims of “Jeju 4.3”—or simply “4.3” as the long-suppressed national trauma inflicted by the post-wwii authoritarian state is known—referencing the flashpoint on April 3, 1948 in Korea’s Jeju Island that ignited an armed uprising against both U.S. Army occupation and the military regime this enabled, and triggered state-enacted campaigns of systematic massacre of Jeju islanders over many years. ² Rather than any trenchant representation of the sociopolitical forces shaping this chronology, Jiseul (potatoes in Jeju dialect) takes its inspiration from a particular story within this larger history of oppression: that of a group of villagers in this southernmost Korean volcanic island who fled into hiding in a huge mid-mountain lava tube cave only to be discovered by troops and executed in December of 1948. ³