NATIONAL GYMNASTICS – Gyuri Lee (Republic of Korea, 2017) 4’21”

 

Welcome to my hometown!

“National Gymnastics (국민체조)” is the name of the Korean national morning exercise routine invented by the government and practiced in schools since the 70’s until the early 2000’s.
This film is not meant to be interpreted but rather experienced visually and audibly, as if you were in a slow car ride back to your childhood home. Take a journey through the nostalgic, yet bizarre visual landscape of my memories and imagination.

 

 

Director Biography – Gyuri Lee

Gyuri Cloe Lee is an independent animator/video artist from South Korea, who has spent half of her life in Korea and the other half in the US. She draws her inspirations from her childhood, as her films often feature the Korean cultural references and imagery, which are taken apart into pieces and reconstructed in order to form her own language. Many of her films examine the awkwardness and discrepancy created among seemingly unrelated things, the juxtapositions of objects and symbols that don’t seem to belong together, or simply misplaced. She is now back in Korea after graduating from Rhode Island School of Design in 2017.