Film Screening of “Paradise” (2023)

“Paradise” revisits South Korea’s era of authoritarian development (1970s-1980s) through the lens of queer livelihood. Despite the harsh realities of successive dictatorships, compulsory military service, and expectations of marriage and childbirth, six elderly gay men reveal how they converted second-run theaters and nearby bars into popular sites of erotic liberation, same-sex friendships, and romantic encounters. Using rare footage of Seoul’s only extant second-run movie house, visual archives, and historical animation, “Paradise” documents South Korea’s vibrant gay underground before the solidification of democracy and the introduction of the internet in the 1990s. Along the way, it follows the pain and joy of queer citizens, whose stories appear for the first time in this empowering film of self-discovery and community building.
This film screening is free and open to the public. Please RSVP here.
About the speakers
Todd A. Henry is Associate Professor of History at UCSD where he also works as a faculty affiliate inTransnational Korean Studies, Critical Gender Studies, Science Studies, and Film Studies. He is the author of Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945 (University of California Press, 2014; Korean translation: 2020), and Profits of Queerness: Media, Medicine, and Citizenship in Authoritarian South Korea, 1950-1980 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, forthcoming). Dr. Henry also edited Queer Korea (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020; Korean translation, 2023).
Minki Hong produces works of video art using the digital language of social media, video games, and virtual worlds to explore social and political questions in the South Korean context. Recently, his efforts have been focused on uncovering the histories of Korean LGBTQ+ people from the 1970s until the present.