KOFA collection 1955–1965: The decade that shaped modern Korean cinema

a curated programme in partnership with Korean Film Archive and Korean Embassy in Prague

“Did God send me out like an aimless bullet with no place to go? But now I should be going somewhere, in some direction.” Cheol-ho, Aimless Bullet

When, in the mid-1950s, the Korean Peninsula was recovering from the ravages of a devastating war, the film industry was virtually non-existent. Over the following decade, however, a small miracle took place. The period between 1955 and 1965 - now referred to as the Golden Age of Korean cinema - was not only a time of quantitative growth, but above all an era of incredible artistic courage, aesthetic exploration and the maturing of cinematic language. This programme charts this dynamic decade through a five-part series of key milestones. It begins with a rare account of the status of women in post-war society from the only female Korean director of the time (The Widow, 1955) and a raw urban chronicle revealing the clash between Korean tradition and Western influence on the black market (The Flower in Hell, 1958). The realist wave reaches its peak in the poignant family drama The Coachman (1961) and in the relentless, existential despair of the iconic film Aimless Bullet (1961) – a work that became a chilling manifesto of an entire generation’s frustration and is still regarded today as the pinnacle of Korean cinema. However, the story of the Golden Age does not end with social (neo)realism. As modernisation progressed, filmmakers ceased to focus solely on the ruins of Seoul and paved the way for pure genre entertainment. The closing instalment, the unbridled supernatural horror film A Bloodthirsty Killer (1965), demonstrates the visual mastery, technical brilliance and stylised playfulness with which the cinema of the time managed to bring an extraordinary decade to a close.