Participating in the jury at Jecheon International Music & Film Festival, 5.-10. september 2024.
Anna Rosenkilde
Leaving the airport, I was welcomed to South Korea by a festival employee and the warm humidity of the early autumn air. Some hours public bus ride away a driver met me to take me to the hotel. He didn’t speak English and apologized for that, but he wanted to communicate. He played me some music showing me the titles on the car’s large information screen. My hotel was situated half an hour’s drive south of Jecheon by a mountain lake. The evening soundscape was an intense and atmospheric soundscape of geckos – some of which sounded almost machine-like. I slept the best I could, being jet lagged, and spent the first day hiking up to a little Buddhist temple uphill that I found on my newly downloaded Korean map app before the evening’s beginning of the festival.
The grand opening ceremony was held in a new art center that had been completed less than a week before the festival began. As part of the jury, I was one of the last people to be called into the theatre. It was a full-on experience with cameras following us down the red carpet, a photo session, and the jury coming on stage to answer some questions. I was asked if it was my first time in Korea – yes – and which Korean films are my favorites. Being a somewhat introvert film composer it was a lot of attention to have on me, but also sweet and fun. Everything was in Korean but they had provided me with a little player for live English translation so I could follow what was being said.
The festival has three film competitions. One for international feature films, one for Korean feature films, and one for Korean short films. As it is a music and film festival, the films must have some kind of music theme to be chosen. Before coming I had imagined I would be on the jury for the international films, but a few days before leaving Copenhagen I found out that I would be on the jury for the Korean feature and short films. This was interesting, and a great chance for me to see a lot of Korean films I probably would not have access to otherwise. Fortunately, they all had English subtitles.
My fellow jury members were a Korean producer who had studied in the U.S. and spoke perfect English, and a Korean director with whom I wished I could have talked more but I don’t speak Korean, and he didn’t speak much English. I was excited to meet them and the day after the big opening we began our tight program of attending screenings of the six feature films and twelve short films. It was a mixture of fiction and documentary films touching on subjects such as relationships, music-making, depression, diversity, longing for connection, the demolition of old neighborhoods, death, spirit animals, and much more. We viewed most of the films at the university’s two screening venues. Many of the short films were student films, and I learned that Korea has a remarkably high number of film schools relative to its population.
Apart from the film program, the festival also had a music program and an industry part that I didn’t have time to take part in due to all my jury work. I did make it to an outdoor concert one evening though, with some popular artists – some K-pop groups of course – and an excited crowd. One evening I also joined a dinner at the hotel for people participating in the industry part. I was fascinated to experience so many Korean film people gathered in one large conference room, and I did manage to talk to a few and to share more about the Nordic film composer’s communities and our Nordic Film Music Days event at the Berlinale.
Towards the end of the festival, we had our jury meeting, where we would decide the winners of the two Korean competitions. I was eager to discuss the films we had seen and to hear what the others thought about various aspects of the films. We had a translator so we could all understand each other. It was not easy to find the right winners, since there were so many things to consider, but in the end we all agreed. I was asked to give the speech for the winner of the feature film competition ‘404 Still Remain’ and the reasons for our choice: “There has been a great variety of both feature and documentary films in this year’s Korean competition, and finding a winner hasn’t been easy. However, the film we have chosen is a touching and beautifully acted story of two high school students bonding through music, while navigating their struggles with identity, attraction, and the profound fear of being different. The film depicts the early 2000’s very well and tells a balanced, thoughtful story on a sensitive subject.” It was such a pleasure to give the award to the director and the leading actor at the closing ceremony, and they were visibly touched to receive it.
After the festival, I gave myself a handful of days to explore Korea. Usually, I would not fly so far away unless staying for a month or more, but I had to go home to work on film music. I first took the train east to go snorkeling, but a storm made my stay there a bit short, and I went to Seoul to explore the city and the border with North Korea. Taking in a bit more of the country, experiencing people’s everyday lives as they were preparing for Chuseok – the Korean Thanksgiving, and digesting all the impressions from the films I had seen and the people I had met. Thanks for having me.
Anna Rosenkildes rejse var støttet af MXD
Danish