21 June. 2pm-4pm.

Discussion after the screening will include participation from Roberto Castillo.

Starting from Guangzhou, China and Ansan, South Korea, the camera follows Roberto and his partner Nadeemy to meet an African Hip Hop singer and other Africans in China.

In the process, we come to apprehend a whole different path of globalization in this part of the world—in China and Korea. Unexpected encounters thrive on love, friendship and aspiration. Like an open cut, there are breathless moments of pain but we all continue walking and drifting in the open cities.

Drifting City premiered at the 20th Busan International Film Festival “Wide Angle” and is distributed by Alexander Street.

Text:
Kim Soyoung: 'Towards a Technology of the Dead: Kim Soyoung on her 'Exile' Documentary Trilogy', Senses of Cinema, March 2016.

KIM Soyoung (alias KIM Jeong) is one of Korea’s best known independent filmmakers and an eminent scholar. Her Women’s History Trilogy (2000-2004) (Koryu : Southern women/South Korea; I’ll Be Seeing Her; New Woman: Her First Song) was screened at Yamagata International Documentary film festival, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Pesaro, Taiwan Women’s Film Festival, Digi Beta Festival in Berlin and broadcast on EBS (Public channel) among many other showcases. From this trilogy, Koryu: Southern women/South Korea is particularly relevant to Kim’s current project as it deals with migration issues. New Woman: Her First Song is distributed by Alexander Street via http://asiapacificfilms.com/films/show/181-new-woman-her-first-song. The trailer is available on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDP7h1dYm_g.

She has made a feature length fiction film entitled Viewfinder (Kyung)(2010) which was screened at Busan International Film Festival and Tokyo International Film Festival as well as at Seoul Indie Film Festival and released in theaters. She is currently working on an Exile Trilogy which includes the proposed work “Alex’s Place: Tashkent in Ansan” as well as “Drifting City” about African traders in Guangzhou, China.

As an academic, she has published numerous books in both Korean and English on modernity, gender, cinema and media including Specters of Modernity: Fantastic Korean Cinema (Korean), andElectronic Elsewhere: Media, Technology, and the Experience of Social Space (U of Minnesota Press, 2010) co-edited by  Chris Berry, Soyoung Kim and Lynn Spigel. She is Director of the Trans Asia Screen Culture Institute, Seoul Korea and editorial board member of Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Kim Soyoung is also a founding programmer of Jeonju International Film festival and Seoul Women’s film Festival. She has been a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and Duke University in the USA.

Roberto CASTILLO is a lecturer at the African Studies Programme at the University of Hong Kong. His academic training is in Cultural Studies, International Relations, History and journalism. He holds a PhD from the Department of Cultural Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Previously, Roberto completed a Masters in Cultural Studies at The University of Sydney, and lived and worked in Beijing and Hong Kong for eight years. His research interests are: transnationality, migration and mobility; the critique of nationalism & globalisation; China’s changing ethnoscapes with a focus on foreign presence in the country; Africa-China relations; (cultural) research methodologies; globalisation of social movements; digital cultures; ethnographic-based knowledge production; and the cultural politics of media representations of race/ethnicity. Roberto administers the website www.africansinchina.net