Feature profile - Anesthesia
Headed for the Berlinale Shorts competition, student director KIM Souk-young talks with Jean NOH about her film <Anesthesia>.
A student at the Korea National University of Arts’ School of Film, TV and Multimedia, director KIM Souk-young will have<Anesthesia> competing in the Berlinale Shorts section. Based on a true story, the film takes place at a small private hospital where the doctor in charge is raping women patients after putting them under anesthesia.
“I read about the story in a newspaper a while ago and it stayed with me. Then we had a class at my school taught by professor and director LEE Chang-dong, where you had to work out a film based on true events. I pitched the story and he said that the synopsis was good and the plot was powerful. “Work at it diligently,” he said. It was something that had stayed with me, and with his encouragement, I forged ahead with it,”says Kim.
The film was made as part of a third year workshop at her university and won support from the Korean Film Council (KOFIC) 2011 Independent Film Production Support program.Shot over eight days, the film was made for about KW14 million (US$12,400) factoring in the school’s equipment and support from KOFIC.
It deals not just with the fact of the criminal abuse, but what happens when a nurse and then others find out about it. Their reactions and behavior are not necessarily the cut-and-dried ones you might expect, and the film is marked by the actors’ intense but understated performances.
“I think I have good fortune when it comes to actors. We were all on the same wavelength and wanted to make a good film. As for directing them, we talked a lot about their respective characters. There are no mistily good or evil characters andirony occurs continuously,” she says.
A graduate of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Kim was an active member of the school’s drama club. “If you want to keep watching actors who act well, you have to keep watching films, and that’s what led me to film studies,” she says.
The film ends with a perhaps unexpected sacrifice and Kim explains her motivation behind dealing with such potentially ugly and disturbing subject matter.
“This isn’t a film made to judge. It was a film made because I wanted to have courage. It was a question I was asking myself about a situation that I would most want to avoid and close my eyes to. Beyond simple escape, what I wanted to express is that the only person that can kill you is yourself, and the only person that can touch you is yourself,” she explains.
<Anesthesia> made its world premiere at the Busan International Film Festival and also screened at the Seoul Independent Film Festival last year.
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