A contemporary history of Korea(s) from a unique point of view that embraces the inner history of both South and North Korea in a single narrative.
Social & External
The people behind it
Moon Jae-in
Self (archive footage)
Kim Jong-un
Donald Trump
Mao Zedong
Harry S. Truman
Douglas MacArthur
Park Chung-hee
Joseph Stalin
Winston Churchill
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The Korean conflict is often called "The Forgotten War," but it has never been forgotten by the men and women who experienced it. These veterans share their thoughts, experiences and memories, highlighting the human and social costs of war.
In 1978, two South Korean filmmakers--Director Shin Sang-ok and his star actress and ex-wife, Choi Eun-hee--were abducted and smuggled into North Korea in order to revolutionize the country's dying film industry.
Based on declassified US military documents and archival footage, as well as testimonies from those who participated in bombings and civilian victims, director Lee Mi-young thoroughly illuminates the reality of the US Air Force’s indiscriminate bombing that resulted in numerous civilian casualties during the three-year Korean War.
A group of women climbs a summer mountain situated in South Korea. They are refugees who have settled into South Korean society after fleeing from North Korea. For them, climbing the mountains has been an unavoidable journey for survival - a matter of life and death.
An amazingly harrowing story of the 17 day engagement of bloody combat and heroic survival in subartic temperatures. UN forces largely outnumbered and surrounded, due to a surprise attack led by 120,000 Chinese troops.
A documentary film covering the life of President Syngman Rhee and the contributions he made to the Republic of Korea, spanning his childhood, focusing on his independence movement, the founding of the nation, the process of leading to victory in the Korean War, and the process of laying the foundation for Korea's industrialization.
Since South and North Korea's liberation in 1945, North Korea, a communist dictatorship that suppresses freedom and oppresses human rights, and South Korea, which has entered the path of economic prosperity and advanced countries based on freedom and democracy, have taken different paths. How did the two countries with the same language, history, and race, become divided into two extreme countries? A work that highlights the sacrifices and struggles of President Syngman Rhee and the first generation of founding members who worked to create and protect today's Republic of Korea over the past 70 years of history.
The love of Kim Jong Il, the former dictator of North Korea, for cinema and his adventures, including the kidnapping of a director.
The Korean War saw three years of heavy combat take place on the small Korean peninsula, ending in a stalemate that remains contested to this day. This documentary tells the story of the Forgotten War from the point of view of the veterans that were sent to fight it.
They speak the same language, share a similar culture and once belonged to a single nation. When the Korean War ended in 1953, ten million families were torn apart. By the early 90s, as the rest of the world celebrated the end of the Cold War, Koreans remain separated between North and South, fearing the threat of mutual destruction. Beginning with one man's journey to reunite with his sister in North Korea, filmmakers Takagi and Choy reveal the personal, social and political dimensions of one of the last divided nations on earth. The film was also the first US project to get permission to film in both South & North Korea.
Bob Woodruff’s daring 880-mile journey along the China-North Korea border examines the delicate relationship between the two countries and the United States.
Nearly 250,000 South Korean children were adopted to the West as “orphans” in the 60 years following the Korean War. Some to loving homes. Others to tragic ends. Raised in places where they looked like nobody else, many were told to forget their past and be grateful. But the innate desire to understand where you came from has led many Korean adoptees to search for their roots. In the process, they discover lies in their past and families they never knew existed. In this documentary series, correspondent Wei Du travels around the world to meet Korean adoptees and accompany a few on their journey to reclaim who they are. Together, they reveal how an “orphan rescue” mission separated families and erased the roots of hundreds of thousands.
True crime meets global spy thriller in this gripping account of the assassination of Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of the North Korean leader. The film follows the trial of the two female assassins, probing the question: were the women trained killers or innocent pawns of North Korea?
A cafe is growing, tucked in to the mountainside air raid shelter of the DMZ borderlands. A light light flickers, illuminating the past, present, and future. I'll see you at the DMZ! Shim was a free, one-day pop-up cafe staged in Yangji-ri village’s air raid shelter at the Korean DMZ. Referencing Korean cafe culture’s fixation on third place, the DMZ’s evolution from security tourism, to ecological peace tourism, and its repurposing as art production site, Shim attempts to intervene and align the past and present. Yangji-ri was one of many minbuk propaganda villages established by the Park Chung Hee regime in the 1960s to showcase the farming bounty and prosperity of the south for a North Korean gaze. The village was formerly part of the Civilian Control Line (CCL) until 2013 when it was reterritorialized as a normal part of South Korea.
As the novel 『LimGeojeong』 becomes a great success, the publisher and the writer's bereaved family in North Korea meet to solve the copyright problem. Their exchanges between South and North Korea create another novel-like story that condenses issues in various fields including politics, economy, and culture together with concerns and hospitality.
Ryun-hee Kim, a North Korean housewife, was forced to come to South Korea and became its citizen against her will. As her seven years of struggle to go back to her family in North Korea continues, the political absurdity hinders her journey back to her loved ones. The life of her family in the North goes on in emptiness, and she fears that she might become someone, like a shadow, who exists only in the fading memory of her family.
In the second part of our film about North Korea, we peeked into real life in one of the most closed countries in the world. What does the average person's day look like? What currency do they use? Who works the fields? What do local guides hide from tourists? To answer all these questions, we grabbed a hidden camera and went filming in North Korea.
In 1962, a U.S. soldier sent to guard the peace in South Korea deserted his unit, walked across the most heavily fortified area on earth and defected to the Cold War enemy, the communist state of North Korea. He became a star of the North Korean propaganda machine, but then disappeared from the face of the earth. Now, after 45 years, the story of James Dresnok, the last American defector in North Korea, is being told for the first time. Crossing the Line follows Dresnok as he recalls his childhood, desertion, and life in the DPRK.
A real-life undercover thriller about two ordinary men who embark on an outrageously dangerous ten-year mission to penetrate the world's most secretive and brutal dictatorship: North Korea.
A documentary about how a dominant cultural and demographic institution both sustains their traditional activities and adapts to the digital revolution.
Al Pacino's deeply-felt rumination on Shakespeare's significance and relevance to the modern world through interviews and an in-depth analysis of "Richard III."
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
A documentary on the life of John Lennon, with a focus on the time in his life when he transformed from a musician into an antiwar activist.
The life and career of an actor, artist, and icon. His own journey through his own camera.
A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.
A woman narrates the thoughts of a world traveler, meditations on time and memory expressed in words and images from places as far-flung as Japan, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, and San Francisco.
A portrait of the day-to-day operations of the National Gallery of London, that reveals the role of the employees and the experiences of the Gallery's visitors. The film portrays the role of the curators and conservators; the education, scientific, and conservation departments; and the audience of all kinds of people who come to experience it.
A look at the "Hell House" performed annually in October by the youth members of Trinity Church (Assemblies of God) in Cedar Hill, Texas (a Dallas suburb) — seen by over 10,000 visitors each year.
A look at the origins, history and conspiracies behind the "Majestic 12", a clandestine group of military and corporate figureheads charged with reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.
Film adaptation of French economist Thomas Piketty's ground-breaking global bestseller of the same name: an eye-opening journey through wealth and power.
Using the book 'Fragments', which collects Marilyn Monroe's poems, notes and letters, and with participation from the Arthur Miller and Truman Capote estates who have contributed more material, each of the actresses will embody the legend at various stages in her life.
A documentary chronicling Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's preparations for the 2007 fall-fashion issue.
An impressionistic portrait of the iconic actor Harry Dean Stanton comprised of intimate moments, film clips from some of his 250 films and his renditions of American folk songs.
Go behind the scenes with stars, puppeteers and creators as they bring Jim Henson's magical world of Thra back to life in a sweeping fantasy series.
The life of Bambi, a male roe deer, from his birth through childhood, the loss of his mother, the finding of a mate, the lessons he learns from his father, and the experience he gains about the dangers posed by human hunters in the forest.
In one single, epic camera move we journey from Earth's surface to the outermost reaches of the universe on a grand tour of the cosmos, to explore newborn stars, distant planets, black holes and beyond.
The life of Mr. Spock, as well as that of Leonard Nimoy, the actor who played him for almost fifty years, written and directed by his son: Adam.
Behind-the-scenes documentary revealing what goes on inside the colourful, privileged, and sometimes stressful Christian Dior fashion house.