Forest Ian Etsler stars in "Korean Times" (2023) / Courtesy of Forest Ian Etsler
Two top-notch foreign filmmakers living in Korea will screen their latest short films this Saturday, as part of the next event hosted by The Soirée.
Sébastien Simon and Forest Ian Etsler, whose collaborative relationship traces back 11 years, will be at Casa Amigo in central Seoul's Itaewon neighborhood.
"Forest's film focuses on Seoul while mine focuses on Busan," Simon told The Korea Times. "Screened together, they manifestly echo each other — Forest even acts in both — but, furthermore, they do show how these two large cities mirror each other."
Etsler will screen his recently completed 18-minute film "Korean Times." It's not a reference to this publication, but an homage to Charlie Chaplin's 1936 film "Modern Times," and Etsler both directs and stars as a "tramp"-like character who goes on slapstick adventures in present-day Seoul.
A title screen for filmmaker Forest Ian Etsler's 2023 film "Korean Times" / Courtesy of Forest Ian Etsler
"The Chaplin, tramp archetype is what brought empathy into cinema," Etsler said. "Buster Keaton and others did more creative cinematic endeavors, but using the protagonist as a vehicle for empathy can't be underestimated as a huge leap in cinema. When having the makeup and costume on, people would react to me in a very different manner. Taxi drivers and random passersby would start telling me old stories. It was like the Chaplin facade — or lens — offers people an empathetic vantage into a bygone time... I would say that was one of my strongest memories of the entire process — the potency and power of Chaplin's tramp."
He came up with the idea during his final semester at Dongkuk University's Graduate Film School, when viewing a Korean documentary of digitalized and remastered old archival footage shot by American soldiers in Korea. "So, naturally I came up with this two-track concept of shooting contemporary Seoul as a Chaplin-esque silent film and incorporating the U.S. GI archival footage to create a strange, cinematic alchemy," he said.
He admitted that, after completing the project, he sat on the footage for about five years, as he struggled with "the incestuous nature of directing, acting and editing one work."
Years later, when he decided to make it into a proper film, all he had to do was shoot a few more pick-up shots, and put an appropriate score to it, for which he enlisted gayageum virtuoso Jung Mina.
He also mentioned that after he earned his Master's of Fine Arts degree, he got a job for about five months with Arirang TV using his character work to produce little sketches for intros and outros of the "K-Phile" series.
Meanwhile, Simon will show his 2022 15-minute docu-fiction film "The Old, The New and The Other," which spotlights a part of Busan he's become very familiar with.
"This area of Haeundae (Dalmaji Hill, Mipo, Cheongsapo) is where I stayed when I came to Korea for the first time, in 2006," Simon told The Korea Times, "at the time, as the editor of 'Korean Don Quixote, Lee Hisé,' an indie documentary directed by Choi Hyun-jung being screened at the Busan International Film Festival, then staying a few extra weeks on vacation."
Simon now works as a professor at Dongseo University International College in Busan, as well as a programmer for the Busan International Short Film Festival.
For his latest offering, he takes a hard look at the gentrification of Mipo, a village on the edge of Busan's Haeundae Beach now known for its recreational coastal rail cars. The area's natural landscape can barely be glimpsed anymore with all the skyscrapers in the way.
"Certainly, that rapid growth and urban development remains a phenomenon that I can't say resembles what I experienced in Europe, where I come from," Simon said. "Therefore, to see it happen here on a daily basis never stops being astonishing. It is an observable, quantifiable measure of time, how fast it passes and how it changes us — which I think is one of the sources of inspiration for most filmmakers and a core tenet of all storytelling."
Forest Ian Etsler stars as a filmmaker in Sébastien Simon's 2022 docu-fiction short film "The Old, the New and the Other." Courtesy of Sébastien Simon
The urban environment, changes to it and exploring it have been central to the themes of Simon and Etsler's work. This traces back to the start of their collaboration in 2012 when they contributed a five-minute video titled "An Urban Story" for "Bitter, Sweet, Seoul," a crowd-sourced documentary put together for the capital city by director Park Chan-wook and his younger brother Chan-kyong. Depicting a walk through a redevelopment zone in western Seoul's Gyonam-dong, they expanded it into the 13-minute "The Urban Suite."
Simon recalls he and Etsler met originally in October 2006 at the Busan International Film Festival, years before they began working together. Since then, they have produced many films together, including "One-minded" (2014), "The Troubled Troubadour" (2016) and “Tetsu Kono's Crazy Routine” (2016).
"I always feel like there is a bit of an unspoken race between foreign filmmakers here: who will be the first one to go mainstream with their film?" Simon said. "I hope that it will happen but, in truth, it might just not. There is an authentic sense of curiosity: 'Can foreigners really make Korean films?' Year after year, more and more foreigners keep coming to learn cinema in Korean universities and film schools: somebody, at some point, is bound to become a household name."
Soirée mixes creators, audiences
The Soirée, which is hosting the screenings, is the product of Paul Soren, a Korean American musician born in Busan. After returning from the U.S., he spent a couple of years living in Busan in the mid-2010s, during which time he participated in events by Liquid Arts Network run by Kenneth May (known to friends as simply "K").
"From the first time we met we immediately clicked. From there, I met many interesting individuals that I am still in frequent contact with, and with them, I got myself involved in many of Liquid Arts Network events," Soren said. "Since I moved up to Seoul in 2017, I've had a hankering for something similar, specifically in HBC, the neighborhood I lived at that time. Hosting open mic nights at Dead Poets (R.I.P) and attending Wordsmith events (also R.I.P) scratched the itch to a certain extent."
Paul Soren performs at a previous event of The Soirée at Itaewon's Casa Amigo, Dec. 11. Courtesy of Ben "Cozy" Coz
As things started to return to normal after the pandemic, Soren decided to start The Soirée, intended to bring Liquid Arts-style events to Seoul. It already hosted one event early last month, offering live music and spoken word performances.
"I owe K for everything I know regarding running and approaching these events," Soren said. "After being involved and sometimes working closely with him for over half a decade, I wanted his blessing to start my own series of events that mirrors the principles of Liquid Arts Network."
During a visit to K in Busan in early December, Soren met Simon and they had an engaging conversation about Simon's work, and this led to the idea to do a film screening for The Soirée.
Etsler shared his enthusiasm for Liquid Arts Network, which also clearly influenced his participation in The Soirée's upcoming event.
"Every time I attend a Liquid Arts event, I usually get my mind blown a few times, and I exit the scene a better person," Etsler said. "I really hope Liquid Arts can continue to keep growing and touching the hearts and minds of many to come."
He added that the first public screening of "Korean Times" was at a Liquid Arts event shortly before the pandemic. "Kenneth liked the work and wanted to screen it. So, I took the opportunity of the screening to tighten up the edit a bit. The result was a much better work. It went over well, lots of laughs and contemplative times. So, a kind of small success," Etsler said. "But a few hours after the screening I got a call from my mom that my grandmother had passed away. In the film there's a picture of her and my grandfather as newlyweds — he's in his military uniform preparing to go fight in the Korean War. So, I reckon that in the buildup to that screening, that in my deep focus of reworking the edit, somehow somewhere my grandmother and I had our last little bit of time together before she passed. That's a niche, personal story in regards to my connection with Liquid Arts and the great and powerful Kenneth."
Simon, who has contributed directly to five film festivals in Korea in a programmer or organizer role, also shared his enthusiasm for screening his latest film at a smaller event like The Soirée.
"There is something to be said about playing a film to an audience who isn't necessarily made of cinephiles or film-related people, and who may be more genuinely surprised by what we are showing them," he said. "Whether it's film festivals or grassroots events, I think each extra screening of our work also acts as a precious reminder that we foreigners aren't here just to teach and that we can also be trusted to add our own contributions to the tapestry of Korean culture."
The Soirée's Liquid Screens event, offered in collaboration with Liquid Arts Network, will start this Saturday at 7 p.m. at Casa Amigo in Itaewon's Gyeongnidan area. Tickets cost 10,000 won and come with a free drink. Follow @the_soiree_seoul on Instagram or visit liquidartsnetwork.com for more information.