"The Work Telling about the Questions at Certain Periods in Life"

Director Jung Yumi's film, House of Existence, is an 8-minute short animation that depicts the gradual process of collapsing a house that seemed quite solid. Through the film, the director asks, "What is the thing we can retrieve vividly without disappearing in time?" Director Jung Yumi, who majored in animation at the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), drew attention when her 2009 film Dust Kid was screened at the Directors' Fortnight at the Festival de Cannes for the first time among Korean animations. Since then, she has built her reputation by winning the grand prize at the Zagreb International Animation Film Festival for the first time for her 2012 film Love Games and by advancing to the Berlinale Shorts Competition at the Berlin International Film Festival with her latest film House of Existence. Director Jung Yumi has continued to publish animations in picture books. Among them, Dust Kid and My Small Doll House won the Ragazzi Award at the Bologna Children's Book Fair for 2 consecutive years. The stories staring at the innermost heart with unique and detailed pictures are loved on paper, too. We had an interview with Director Jung Yumi to talk about the world of her artworks, focusing on House of Existence, which was also screened at the Bucheon International Animation Festival.

- House of Existence is a short animation based on 'Move', a work that was first published in the book 《House of Fiction》. Tell us how you started the film based on the book.​ 

= 《House of Fiction》 is a collection of novels and paintings by novelists, architects, and writers under the theme, 'House.' I expressed the process of the house disappearing. I was interested in expressing something that collapses, falls apart, and breaks. I thought that would make me feel better. (Laughter) House of Existence is a film that shows a process only without any particular stories. I wanted to express the feelings we have when a house disappears, which really looks like a house full of household goods and our belongings.

- The process of a house collapsing sounds lonely. 

= Actually, that is one of the concepts. We use energy and try hard to get material things we value, thinking they are precious. However, in our lives, such things sometimes disappear from us against our will. When it happens, we can feel a kind of emptiness like death. However, through such a process, we also can free ourselves from the things that have tied us for a long time. There's a saying that destruction is the mother of something new, right?

- How did you want to describe the house in House of Existence? From brick exteriors to wooden furniture, everything seems more old than new. 

= Currently, the most standard living space for Koreans is apartments, but I wanted to use the design that comes to mind when I think of 'home' rather than such a realistic house as a building. The house in the film is in the form of a typical house with a triangular roof and windows. I searched designs for a stereotyped house, but most of them were quite modern. The house in the film is also referred to as one of the modern house designs.

- What part did you care more about when describing the inside of the house? 

= I wanted to describe it as a place packed with things. The interior is also a stereotyped space. It has a living room, a dressing room, bedrooms, and a kitchen, and each room is filled with typical items that fit the space. Instead of showing someone's particular private life, the house is decorated with a universal design. I thought it was a story that every human being could sympathize with, and I hoped the audience could put themselves into the situation. This kind of description is also my personal taste. Although the items are stereotyped, I like to describe their forms in detail.

- The house is collapsing inward from the outmost windows and walls to the living room and bedrooms. 

= From the most frontal room to the last one, the rooms in the house are revealed one after another. I didn't care about the left side or the right side. The concept of the story is to reveal the last person hiding inside in terms of location, and there is a person at the innermost and the layers in front of him/her seem to disappear one by one. After the household things in the house are broken, they disappear from the floor just like an ice cube is melting away. In terms of its transparency, I wanted to make it look like it permeated below rather than disappearing into the air.

- The theme 'House' is also the main motif of your works. Dust Kid is the story of cleaning up the house, and My Small Doll House is about leaving the house. What kind of space is 'House' to you? 

= I like the theme 'house' because it is a symbol that can express many things. I think I regard 'house' as ego. The house is like a psychological space, that is, our innermost hearts. In Dust Kid, a messy house expresses a stuffy and internally untidy state. In House of Existence, the process of the house collapsing seems to be the process of the collapse of our innermost hearts. I thought it could be expressed that something new emerges through collapse. In My Small Doll House, there appears a variety of voices of the character, that is, the ego that has constrained the main character. I thought coming out of the house, a little closed and unchanged with those voices, and moving somewhere else could mean the escape from our previous selves.

- You also have been working on publishing your animation films by weaving them into picture books. This time, however, you made the film using the picture book that was published first. 

= For the first time, I worked on a picture book first prior to its film version. I thought it would be nice to make it into a video version later while working on the picture book. For the animation version, instead of doing the animation work myself, I worked with my friend, who works on animation. Since the story was so simple and it was expressed in pictures, I could work on it as much as I wanted with my friend who is good at animation. Honestly, I don't have top-notch animation skills, and I can't work inefficiently, but it was fantastic for me to work with a good friend with great technique.

- Do you work with picture books and animations in mind when you start working? 

= It's not necessarily. If you come up with a story, you can change the media for it as much as you want. Since I am used to picture books and animations at the same time, I think I can make a story using both versions. When I get to be familiar with live-action films, I can think of that version, too.

- In the case of My Small Doll House, the picture book and the animation have different drawing styles for the figures in the story. The description of the animation is more realistic, so it feels a little bit more grotesque, I think. Do you sometimes change drawing styles depending on the medium? 

= The book version of Dust Kid or Love Games was made by arranging cuts used in the animations like cartoons, and for My Small Doll House, I redrew the cuts. The pictures used in the animation are black and white without coloring, and they are a little less dense. I thought My Small Doll House would be better suited to the picture book format than the previous method. In addition, since the animation layouts were often rendered with pencils, I thought it would be better to change the characters according to the tones in the picture book. I feel that My Small Doll House is a little fancier than other works. It is a story with many decorative things and cuter elements.

- As an individual medium, what do picture books and animations mean to you? 

= I was naturally attracted to picture books since little. Picture books were the first medium that I experienced the combination of story and image. Animation is also a combination of a story and moving pictures. When I first started animation, I thought picture books were moving. The classes at KAFA emphasize scripts. I thought I was more interested in pictures than stories, but after I entered the Korean Academy of Film Arts, I watched a lot of movies and took story-related classes to increase the fun of stories. While studying scenes and cuts, I could write scripts myself when making animations.

- Did you have any favorite writers, directors, or films when you studied drawing and animation? 

= Quay brothers were the first writers who made me interested in animation. When I happened to see the still work of a puppet animation they made by filming each scene while moving dolls little by little, I found it so attractive. After that, I searched for their works, and they were very beautiful, and I thought it would be good for me to do that kind of work. So when I decided to enter KAFA, I submitted a portfolio I had created as a puppet animation.

- After majoring in pure fine arts in college, you started animation through the regular course at KAFA. 

= In fact, I wanted to major in animation when I entered university, but there were not many universities with such a major. I was interested in more experimental animation images, but the curriculums at school seemed to focus more on Japanese animations or genre animations. So, I applied for the pure painting department because I wanted to try many interesting images. I've liked drawing and painting since I was little. I loved drawing and stories, but I didn't think I would do anything with them as my career. When I entered college, I thought drawing and stories were the two things I loved most, and that's why I chose to major in arts.

- Are you interested in working apart from animation?

= Recently, I participated in the work of an independent live-action film script, and I felt my limit. However, it was good for me to try a full-length script. I'm not used to having to talk more and create a big flow, but experiencing the process was fruitful. Unlike animation, live-action work is expressed by actors who make the stories in the script into their own. It was fun to see the script enriching through the actors.

- How do you tend to find subject matters? 

= What matters most for me is to see if there's something I want to talk about. In the process of getting older, there are always questions we should ask at each stage of our lives. I work when I think it would be nice to talk about those questions that I encounter at certain periods in my life. It's hard to start working when I don't understand what I want to say.

- What is your best interest nowadays? 

= Originally, I was interested in psychological things. If I didn't major in art, I thought I would want to study psychology. I read a lot of books related to psychology, and now I am interested in meditation. I'm also interested in surreal things. I don't know if I'll talk about such subjects in my works in the future, but when we think about living, we also think about the principles of life and death. I've become more interested in such stories.

- What are you working on now? 

= Currently, I'm working on a 20-minute animation funded by the Korean Film Council, and I also completed a short animation this year. I think I can show 3 other films after House of Existence. After taking a break from work for a while, I started working again and made the films consecutively. Last year, I worked on an animation titled The Waves. The work was commissioned by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, and I think we can distribute and release the work next year.

- Is it the period when you have a lot of things to talk about or questions? 

= For about 5 years, I was a little tired of working on animations, so I wanted to do something new that I was not used to. Now, I'm in a period where I have something to talk about and feel fun working on it, so I'm trying to do it steadily.