Home  Arts Gallery Empress Chung: New York Premiere Screening
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Empress Chung: New York Premiere Screening |
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It's a classically Korean tale-a small triumph of geopolitics too-and it was bought to New York audiences for the first time by The Korea Society. The animated feature-length film Empress Chung played for one night at The French Institute in Midtown, telling the story of a dutiful Korean daughter who sacrifices herself to the Dragon King in order to redeem her blind father's sight, starting a magical undersea adventure that ends with her becoming an empress. Already in wide-release throughout Asia, Empress Chung has played in only a handful of American venues. The plot would have seemed familiar to anyone who knows Korean folklore. Less obvious would have been the story behind the production. The film has been hailed as a triumph of geopolitics as well as animation since it is the first feature-length animation that employed artists from both North and South Korea. Directed by iconic Korean-American animator Nelson Shin, Empress Chung was a joint production involving both South Korean and North Korean artists. Immediately following the screening, wowed cinema-goers were shepherded to a complementary lecture by Heinz Insu Fenkl, director of the Interstitial Studies Institute at SUNY New Paltz. Fenkl's talk, titled "Empress Chung: Korea's Beauty and the Beast," introduced listeners to deep, uniquely Korean values that the film (and folktale) express, and traced the roots of the story through other ancient East Asian traditions. His lecture also illustrated how the traditional folktale had been adapted in this animated version to convey a message about the universal Korean aspiration for national reunification.
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