Han Okhi in the ’70s, from her film Untitled 77-A. Credit: Harvard Film Archive Untitled 77-ADir. Han OkhiJeonju Film FestivalJeonju, South KoreaApril 29—May 8, 2026 (Jisu Sheen recently moved from New Haven to Gwangju, South Korea, where she’s covering local arts and culture for the N ew Haven Independent and Midbrow.) In 1977, Han Okhi walked from Namsan to Seoul’s film street Chungmuro and into the busy streets of Myeongdong, carrying a heavy camera on her shoulder. Like a machine gun, she recalled. I met her at this year’s annual Jeonju Film Festival, a ten-day cinema celebration with talks, awards, a red carpet, and multiple theaters showing hundreds of movies. The scene of Han and her camera appears in Han’s short film Untitled 77-A, which was screened as part of an avant-garde section of the festival. The festival places a special focus on films outside the mainstream, a niche Han has made herself comfortable in since the start of her career. Together with other women directors, she formed experimental film group Kaidu Club back in the ’70s. Han and her club were doing more than making non-normative movies. Like poets, she said, they developed a voice no one else could imitate. They were creating what Han called their own “cinema language.” Through interpreter Go Un Liz Kim, Han reminisced on the films her colleagues were making at the time of Kaidu Club. For example, there was XXOX by Yi Jeonghui. Everything is wrong, Han explained, but even so, maybe there is something right. Then there was a film made by Han Sunae, where one scene of a woman’s gaze repeats over and over for 20 minutes. In describing fellow filmmaker Kim Jeomseon, Han called attention to her name: jeom means dot, and seom means line. Kim would cut celluloid film in her work, drawing dots and lines and recording her voice for the audio. “It’s really sharp,” Han said. “It feels like someone cut you with a blade.” Kim appears alongside Han in Untitled 77-A, wielding a large pair of shears to announce the final “Cut!” of the movie, an action directed toward the camera itself. It’s a striking moment. In the scenes leading up to it, sounds and images of laughter come through as unnerving, their cause unclear. Right at the end, Han’s big smile feels genuine, a relief. There is a light bounce in her shoulder. Understanding more about Han’s cohort helped me contextualize her work. Experiments in Untitled 77-A, like playing with the physical nature of the film itself, did not spring up out of nowhere. Han must have been talking to her club the whole time. In Untitled 77-A, an on-screen Han cuts pieces of film to the sound of otherworldly electronic music. From her focused expressions to the machine-gun camera, there is a sense of control in the midst of chaos. Other scenes complicate that idea. Body parts made of clay fall to the ground. Decisive cuts of film make way for harsh cuts into a wall, causing it to bleed. Even Kim Jeomseon’s last chop at the end of the film stops in freeze-frame. The cut itself is cut. Why is Han’s piece called Untitled 77-A? The answer is simple. She made the film in 1977, she rejected the need for a title, and she thought maybe this could be the first of a series. It made me wonder what Untitled 77-B might have been like. And Untitled 77-C, D… Han described the themes that haunt her. She talked of the repetition of agonies and the fight against the decay of civilization. In making avant-garde films during a time of social suppression under military dictator Park Chung Hee, she was both revealing and resisting life under censorship. In that time, she said, the political situation was bleak. There were crackdowns on anything that could be considered “against the government” or public order. If you spit on the street, you could be detained for 20 days. Han rose through the ranks of a journalism career, only to learn her first task at her new job was to write an etiquette piece about “how a woman should behave.” “I was disappointed,” she said. She penned a resignation letter and started meeting up with an AV club at a local cafe. Through the club, Han met another avant-garde woman filmmaker and realized they needed an independent space for themselves. They formed Kaidu Club and hit the scene with a screening on the rooftop of Myeongdong’s Shinsegae Department Store. This bright success did not mean Kaidu Club was about to start making hero films. They kept the art real by borrowing from the surreal to evoke long-hidden sensations. Untitled 77-A seems to ground the delirious thrill of self-definition with an undercurrent of exhaustion. Having to keep making more and more cuts—at a certain point, does it matter who holds the shears? Something vital keeps hitting the cutting room floor. Avant-garde pieces are not known for wrapping up the story with a tidy bow, and I could say the same for my conversation with Director Han. She described the “long, seemingly endless tunnel” artists must go through and the last blood you release before you die. I admit I didn’t get everything. Through works like Untitled 77-A, I am learning life is not always something to “get.” It can be something to cut into pieces, rearrange, and dance with, determined to have—if nothing else—the last laugh. The post Han Okhi’s Cinema Language appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less