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Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Soon-Mi Yoo's Songs from the North (북녘에서 온 노래) online with Pitt's Asian Studies Center, July 22.



The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will present the 2014 Soon-Mi Yoo documentary Songs from the North (북녘에서 온 노래) on July 22, as the second installment of its online Summer Screenshots: Hot Nights And Cold War series. (Please note the date change from the original announcement.) From a New York Times review:
More art-video installation than typical documentary, “Songs From the North” is mostly nonnarrative, drawing on North Korean film and TV clips to sketch a sensibility that — however stoked by propaganda — prizes family above all and melds that with a zealous commitment to the fatherland. Song and music invoke shared ideals of sacrifice, honor and patriotism; one televised event that features a young boy crying as he sings of his love of country — as an audience of dignitaries also sobs — is moving and disturbing.
. . .
Scattering history lessons and ambiguous imagery amid Ms. Yoo’s engagement with North Koreans, her film implicitly asks: What must they think of us?
The presentation runs from 4:00 to 7:00 pm and registration is required.