Silent Cinema in Colonial Korea: Aesthetics of Inter-titles

Since the rediscovery of long lost films from the late colonial period in the early 2000s, there has been increasing attention on colonial-era talkies among scholars in Korea. At the same time, there has been a renewed effort to revisit early silent films. This has led to major efforts to reassess nationalist readings of previous film historiography. It has been revealed, for instance, that Na Un-gyu's silent film Arirang (1926), which is often deemed as the crème de la crème in the history of Korean film, feature characteristics from Hollywood serial films and feature films. Building on such recent transnational research outcomes, this presentation will focus on the analysis of the 'inter-title' and its relationship to the aesthetics of colonial-era silent films. Unlike the mediating role of the movie narrator (benshi, by¿nsa) which has been theorized in various ways, subtitles, especially the inter-titles of silent movies, have been neglected by researchers, despite their centrality in our understanding of the process of translation, circulation, and reception of early films in East Asia. This talk focuses on the aesthetic functions of silent film inter-titles in works directed by Na Ungyu, a prominent actor, director and producer in colonial Korea.

Talk is part of the APSI Fall Speaker Series.