The Embrace (이상적인 포옹) - Pilar Mata Dupont - Trailer
A trailer for my film, 'The Embrace', which I created (wrote, designed, and directed) in South Korea in 2013. In 'The Embrace (이상적인 포옹)', Pilar Mata Dupont has animated reunification monuments from North and South Korea to play with utopian ideas of reconciliation, and the significance of 'the embrace' as representation of the reunification in the South Korean national narrative. The two figures from the 'Three Charters for National Reunification' monument embrace in joy, only to have their bliss dissipate and a new, and unexpectedly uncomfortable, era to emerge. The work references DPRK propaganda, K-pop, texts by Andrei Lankov and Lee Eung-joon, and the romantic notions of unification used by artists, filmmakers, and writers in South Korea during the late 90s and early 21st Century; the 'Sunshine Policy' era of soft-line attitude to the North. The work was developed after two years of research including stays in North and South Korea, and through interviews and conversations with North Korean refugees and refugee workers in Seoul.