Daughter of Mobius (Mwebiuse-wi-ddal) (1981)
Director : Kim Yui-seok
Year of Production : 1981
Genre : Documentary
Format : 16mm/B&W
Running Time : 14 minutes
Cast :
Kim Ki-in and the Contemporary Dancers
Synopsis
Kim Ki-suk is a 29-year-old dancer and single woman who lives by herself. The movie is made in black and white, and shows the daily life of the dancer. Her narration is added to the film and reveals that she finds single life wearisome.
By connecting the inside and the outside, the Mobius strip contradicts conventional wisdom that thinks that a strip can be divided into the inside and the outside. In this way, the life of the dancer is a contradiction, she is stuck in a wearisome cycle from which she longs to escape but doesn’t. This shows not only the life of the dancer, but, in a sense, the situation that all of the single women of the era - they are lost and their goals and dreams conflict with the prevailing social attitude of the times. The movie shows a woman labeled an “old maid,” struggling to find her identity in Seoul in the early 80s.
Notes
Daughter of Mobius shows the struggles of an independent women living in the early 80s - an era when it was much more difficult for women to be independent. The movie follows a 29-year-old single woman - who at the time was the object of social prejudices - through her daily life, showing the sights of Seoul in the early 80s and the life of the woman, in documentary style.
Director Bio : Kim Yui-seok (1957- )
Born in 1957, in Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do. He graduated from the Department of Film Studies at Chung-ang University and entered the Korean Academy of Film in the year it was founded. He received attention for Daughter of Mobius (Mwebiuse-wi-ddal) as well as Chang-su’s Age of Employment (Changsuwi-chiubshidae), a comic short about Chang-su, a naive pickpocket on his oft-perilous journey through life. After graduation, he acquired on the set experience working as an assistant director to Jang Seon-woo, Kim Hyun-myung, and Im Kwon-taek, making his directorial debut with The Marriage Life (Gyeolhon-i-yagi) in 1992. The Marriage Life (Gyeolhon-i-yagi) is known as one of the first high concept movies. It sold 500,000 tickets at the box office. Afterward, with the following successes of The Woman and The Man (Geu yeoja geu namja) and Gun and Gun (Chongjab-i), Kim Ui-seok was recognized along with Kang Woo-suk as a one of the successful directors at the box office to appear in the 90s. But after his 1997 movie, Holiday Inn Seoul, was criticized for plagiarizing director Kar Wai Wong’s movies, the movie was shunned by critics and audiences alike. Afterward, he released The Great Chef (Buggyoungbanjeom) in 1999, but it didn’t receive much attention. His most recent movie is At The Risk Of Life (Sasaenggyeoldan), made in 2006.
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