<Over Me (Obeomi)> (1996)

Director : Lim Chang-jae
Year of Production : 1996
Genre : Experimental Film
Format : 16mm/Color, B&W
Running Time : 18 minutes

Crew :
Screenplay/Director/Cinematography/Editing/Production/Animation : Lim Chang-jae
Distribution : Indie Story
Music : Kim Joo-ri

Synopsis

A woman arrives at her home. As she is resting there, she becomes lost in a fantastic dream. The spirit of a dead man approaches her and she witnesses his death. Although she feels a longing for the man, she recognizes the fact that he is dead.

Notes

Beginning of Modernism in Korean Cinema (Kang So-won), Korea’s First Independent Film (Yi Hyo-in)
It was Korea’s first independent film. Considering the sensibilities of the era, its images were shocking and offered a look at the young people of the 70s through a new modern and experimental aesthetic.

Purpose of Production

A spirit floats around like the soundless whispering of dust, murmuring, lost in its past agonies - loneliness, death, despair, waiting, longing, a sense of powerlessness and confusion. Time passes by indefinitely as the spirit floats over wastelands that have been scorched under the blood red sun, tired, dejected, letting the wind take it wherever it will, like a discarded plastic bag. The people who have crossed the River Styx and the people who have yet to cross it are dangerously close, the dead hiding in the everyday of the living. Concepts.
It was a warm, tranquil night in a faraway foreign land. The light reflecting on the water revealed the image of a man who I could only grasp as a shadow in the vague images of my memory. There, in my memory, the man remained motionless, waiting for the profound darkness to swallow him. At that moment, the wings of a moth with the image of a woman fluttered, shaking powder off which floated away, becoming a spirit that guided the man to the other side of the darkness. Aura.
Afterward, I began conceptualizing a new work. It was a movie about the ghosts of memory which are trapped in the fragmented time of a woman, and the images of expressionless and lonely people which have been engraved in my memory. This was done through experimentation, by creating a labyrinth of images and meanings within the film. I constructed the movie by tracing the vestiges left by the spirit within that labyrinth. And what I felt was lacking in the construction of the movie, I filled in with my imagination. During this time, I felt scared that I was somehow going around in circles. I felt fear that I myself was somehow becoming a ghost, and this provided me with the impetus to escape the labyrinth that I had created. This is how I finished my work on the film. My film, which ends with a sense of incompletion, was constructed through mere imaginative speculation, of the fragmentary pieces of a puzzle that the spirit left behind. If those fragmentary pieces are proof of my wanderings, all I can do is accept them as relics of my past. So, have I truly escaped the spirit’s labyrinth?

Awards and Showings at Film Festivals

Officially Shown at Indie Forum 96
Shown as part of the 1st Pusan International Film Festival Wide Angle Category, 1996
13th Hamburg International Short Film Festival, 1997
Invited to be shown at the Special Korean Movie Screening at the 10th Sao Paulo International Short Film Festival, 1999

Director Bio : Lim Chang-jae (1964- )

He was a member of the New Image Group from 1993 - 1994. He has been a member of Korean Experimental Film Research Center since 1995. His works include ORG (1994), Over Me (1996), Lachrymal (Nunmul) (1998), Aqua Requiem (Akua Rekwiem) (1999) and Transfigured Night (Jeonghwadoen Bam) (2000). He made his commercial debut with Unborn but Forgotten (Hayanbang) in 2002.