<All live, Olive>
directed by Kim Tae-il and Joo Lo-mi :
Regarding the way to construct
“World History of the People”

KIM Shin Editor

 

Anti-semitism movement which began to aggravate from the late 20 century in Europe and led to a historical event, that is, World War made Jews organize a resistant nationalist movement. This Jewish nationalist movement well known as so-called ‘Zionism’ continued to expand in scope and resulted in establishing a nation. That nation is Israel as we all know well. The problem is that the nation building process of Israel was done in the way that justified atrocities of invading Palestinians having lived in the region, claiming the ownership of the region based on the historical records in Bible. Dispute which began from thess atrocities is still continuing and Palestinian residents who were expelled from its own land have been living in the refugee zone named as “Gaza strip’ under occupation for 69 years.

Tae Il Kim, a director who has been working on 10 documentary series of ‘World History of the People’ visited the Gaza strip to film the 3rd episode of the documentary series. <All live Olive, 2016> is the outcome from what he covered was released on July 13. How did he approach and incorporate this historical event?

One way instantly occurring to me as one of the movie audience is to highlight the political landscape of dispute between Israel and Palestine. It will present a way to view social situations of the dispute which has long and wide historical and physical implications from a comprehensive perspective and will also function as a propaganda tool drawing attention from international society by focusing the distinct contrast of slaughters and the slaughtered. In addition, it will work favorably in prompting anger from multiplex theater audience who are accustomed to good and evil structure of characters which highlights the contrast between a leading character in trouble and a villain harassing the leading character.

However, the way to refine with a familiar method has limits more than strengths. The reason is simple. The reality we are living in essentially doesn’t constitute in the narration of dichotomy. The syntax of mainstream movies centered on making disguised illusion by editing and welding time and space of reality. But, the result always misses the truth since it includes transformation and manipulation. It is also the case with making the dispute Palestine and Israel into a movie. At the moment capturing the event in a familiar and conventional way even though they come from planning based on good will, it is unavoidable that the realistic specificity of life in Gaza strip disappears in the abstract concept of another ‘Life of the 3rd world refugees’. Borrowing the words by Kim So-hee, a critic who told that it needs extra caution to portray the issue of comfort women in a movie, it can end up a way to become most distant from “‘knowing correctly’(Kim So-hee, 「‘Regarding the current meaning of the trilogy of The Murmuring」, Seoul Art Cinema, webblog).

It echoes with the critical mind that director Kim Tae-il and Joo Lo-mi have. Director Kim Tae-il has devoted himself to capturing many domestic political events since mid 90s with his camera. The reason why he turned to capture specific life of social minority involved in such events at some point may be that he also knew the drawback of stylized narrative from experience. The documentary series of ‘World History of the People’ they produced try to shed light on today of places where historical conflicts took place but what the audience can see in the works is local people’s vivid words and behaviors recorded from the perspective of a listener, not enlightening message with propagandic nuance. And the history recorded this way succeeds in making another version of history recorded from the perspective of minority we have not seen so far, instead of reproducing history narrated from the perspective of the 1ST world.

The documentary series of ‘World History of the People’ have produced 3 episodes so far. <No name stars, 2010>, a documentary which was made to record the present of democratization movement, <Welling Trei, 2012> which tried to portray the life of the Bunong tribe, a Cambodian minority tribe which suffered from civil war and <All live, Olive> as mentioned above. <No name stars, 2010>, which tried to portray the Gwangju democratization movement has tightly knitted density and flow since the director filmed the situation of his own country. Nevertheless, these 3 works were all completed using the method of filming the life of the people as it is without filtering, instead of being attached to macro agenda with precise plot and preaching message. While they lack consistent perspective and plot, they naturally take the form of collage which combines various layers of stories of many people(In this sense, one of the most interesting things in <No name stars, 2010>, it revealed a sense of guilty and trauma of a person who took on the role of a platoon leader of the martial law army during May Gwangju democratization movement, and differing opinions of people who now want to forget the incident as it didn’t try to uniformly place them into a certain frame instead of easily describing the people of Gwangju as a congregation of the oppressed).

Different from <No name stars, 2010> in which the director could deal with his country’s situation and <Welling Trei, 2012> which dealt with the aftermath of the past civil war, situations in Palestine appearing in <All live, Olive> which dealt with conflict still ongoing are much more adventurous and intense. In a foreign country where even locals of Gaza strip couldn’t move around without being issued a pass, Kim Tae-il and Joo Lo-mi stayed for about 1 year overcoming countless limitations and succeeded in making a movie. While this movie lack macro outlook and political long narration, it delivers creepy and gloomy atmosphere across the screen like the magnified sound of ambiguous prayers spreading out over the dark blue night scenery of Nablus. And there is sublimity of a small act of still trying to plant their traditional trees and continuing the fight under such situation. Micro history of them which had to be forgotten paradoxically amid numerous discourses and images. Watching <All live, Olive> in a cinema in the same age may be a rare incident to experience this sublime history of the people.