Revenge (1989) directed by Kazakh Yermek Shinarbayev, when he was still a citizen of the Soviet Union, was another interesting selection from Martin Scorsese's World Cinema Project No. 2. Shinarbayev and writer Anatoli Kim are of Korean descent and have fashioned a fable about revenge, poetry, history, and time. The film begins in 17th century Joseon period then shifts to the countryside of Korea in 1915 and then goes to China and back. Before ending the story on the Sakhalin in Russia. I learned that there is a curious history about why people of Korean descent are in Kazakhstan. it seems after WWII there were thousands of Korean conscripted Korean workers on Sakahlin that were brought there by the Japanese to work in the mines, but once the war ended the whole island was ceded to the Soviets. The Koreans were forcibly relocated by Stalin to Kazakhstan in the middle of the winter with the expectation that they would not survive, however, the Kazakhs took them in and they survived-both the director and writer are of Korean descent. It is a strange lyrical story that did not end as I though it might. The ending is somewhat elusive but appropriate.
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This helps solve the mystery of why there are no direct flights to Alamaty from Tokyo, and I went via Seoul.
Posted by: Ted T | July 16, 2017 at 06:44 AM
Well, not exactly Hawaii either.
Posted by: MC | July 16, 2017 at 10:53 AM