Bad Times (Nabbensijul) (1994)
Director : Yum Jeong-seok
Year of Production : 1994
Genre : Drama/Fiction
Format : 16mm/Color
Running Time : 106 minutes
Synopsis
A 24-year-old man’s longtime lover has had two abortions and the story happens during the 3 day period when they are apart which they spend in fear that the woman may be pregnant for the third time. The man becomes involved with strange incidents as he attempts to acquire money for the surgery and ends up with a gun with a single bullet in its chamber. The woman goes to the hospital to find out whether she is pregnant or not. On the final day, the woman breaks up with the man and the man fires the gun.
Notes
An early and indefinable attempt at modernism. A long independent film that should have been introduced to the public more actively. (Kang So-won)
Purpose of Production
Although we had the title for the movie, we didn’t have a complete script. We began filming with an actor and an actress, without any lighting, and only a non-simultaneous recorder and a camera. Strangely, nobody said to look at the screenplay. Like the audience, I still am not sure if the female character was pregnant or not. We could plan the next scene only after its previous scene was shot, and this meant that we had to do without the luxury of dramatic structure. But I felt that its absence in itself would leave its unique imprint on the movie. Frankly, including myself, no one knew what kind of film we were shooting or where the storyline was heading. But there was a reason that we could shoot the film in such a manner. It’s the reason that I’ve always wanted to make a documentary and also feel a special affinity for the genre. That is, instead of creating something, I like to wait for something to happen. I had a rough plan and I waited for the miraculous moment when reality and cinema would intertwine but nothing like that happened, in fact, everything that shouldn’t happen, happened. But I still trust in the automatism of the movie making process. Artificial fabrication is the reason that movies keep getting worse; movies today lack the space that allows for creative automatism. That is why every time I hit a wall, the only way I can overcome it is to become frank with myself. The true value of this movie lies within the fact that it was produced with this attitude. And this attitude helped me eliminate the superfluous elements of film and return to the true essence of cinema.
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