Disarming Japan’s Cannons with Hollywood’s Cameras1 min read
Reading Time: < 1 minuteA brief history of Hollywood’s dominance in the region is presented to help account for the influence of American film and American culture on Koreans.
Within seven months of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), US film distributors rushed their most popular films to the southern half of the Korean peninsula.
Soon after liberation, local filmmakers and entertainment entrepreneurs became frustrated at the “˜undemocratic’ ways in which US occupation policy was restricting their activities.
A wave of young and experienced filmmakers, many of whom who had grown up on a heavy diet of Hollywood films between 1926 and 1936, and who had gained valuable training making propaganda films for the Korean Colonial Government, were ready to explore realist aesthetics, film as art, and narratives that resisted Japanese power.
