Country: Sweden
Year: 2009
Duration: 28'
madame & little boy Choi Eun-hee is a famous South Korean actress who was kidnapped in 1978 with her former husband and director by the future North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il to turn them into symbols of his propaganda. They are forced to work on the blockbuster Pulgasari, Korea’s answer to Japan’s Godzilla. They manage to escape in 1986 and ask for political asylum from the United States, abandoning the ambitious film project. Their story, as told by the singer-songwriter Will Oldham, interweaves with the genealogy of film monsters and reflections on nuclear weapons, starting with Hiroshima. “This video essay takes a standpoint against common documentary practice. The story of Madame & Little Boy (the code name of the Hiroshima bomb) is narrated in a studio building next to The Nike Missile Site outside San Francisco. This site, serving as an intersection of the present and past, is also a place for viewing and talking back to images: the surrounding American landscape, the missile site, clips from Choi Eun-hee performances and footages from North Korea.”
Biography
film director
Magnus Bärtås
Magnus Bärtås (Jönköping, Sweden, 1962) is an artist, writer and professor of fine arts at Konstfack, the University College of Arts Crafts and Design in Stockholm. He has exhibited at Platform 2009, Seoul, Miroslav Kraljevic Gallery, Zagreb, and the 4th Bucharest Biennial. His video-works have been screened at Centre Pompidou, Paris, Moderna Museet, Stockholm and the Powerplant Gallery, Toronto. His video essay Madame & Little Boy won the Grand Prize at Oberhausen International Filmfestival. His dissertation You Told Me - Work Stories and Video Essays was published in 2010.
FILMOGRAFIA
filmografia/filmography
Anna, var är Paulina idag? (cm, 1998), Do You Know What It Means to Love Someone? (cm, 1999), Satellites (cm, 2002), Who Is Eva Quintas? (cm, 2003), Who Is Zdenko Buzek? (cm, 2003), Who Is Dimitris Houliarakis? (cm, 2005), Eva-Lena Says (cm, 2006), Kumiko, Johnnie Walker & the Cute (cm, 2007), Madame & Little Boy (cm, doc., 2009).
Cast
& Credits
regia, sceneggiatura, montaggio, produttore/director, screenplay, film editing, producer
Magnus Bärtås
musica/music
Dräp en hund
suono/sound
Joachim Eckermann
interpreti e personaggi/cast and characters
Will Oldham (voce narrante/Narrator), Choi Eun-hee (se stessa/Herself)
