The Korean director Choi Jeong-dan, the assistant director Kim Gooyoung, and the cinematographer Park Jane introduced the film In the Sea of Strange Thoughts, which is part of the Documentary Film Competition of the 48th Moscow International Film Festival.
This documentary chronicle, which took 21 years to complete, tells about the daily life and work of Kim Uchang, a "hermit thinker" and an outstanding South Korean humanist. It is a story of a unique journey of a man who dedicated his life to the quest of truth.
Choe Jeong-dan: "Kim Uchang was very knowledgeable in Western philosophy and literature; he graduated from Harvard and read Kant in the original. He can be called one of the most outstanding experts in Western philosophy, who at the same time knew traditional Eastern philosophy very well: he has many works on Korea and China. So I would call him a unique scholar who links Western and Eastern philosophy. He himself is a very private person, and we wanted to open a door to his life, at least slightly. The film took 21 years to make, and those were the years of struggling and pain, because the teacher didn’t want to be filmed, and there were moments when I cried alone as I could do nothing about it. But despite this, there is a great deal of love in Teacher Kim Uchang – something we all lack".
Park Jane: "Kim Uchang didn’t want to be filmed at all. So we kept pushing the limits: figuring out when we could film and when we had to stop. And I had that moral concern in my mind for all these years. I tried to stay a step behind the teacher and at the same time by his side, right next to him, to try to show as much as possible".
This documentary chronicle, which took 21 years to complete, tells about the daily life and work of Kim Uchang, a "hermit thinker" and an outstanding South Korean humanist. It is a story of a unique journey of a man who dedicated his life to the quest of truth.
Choe Jeong-dan: "Kim Uchang was very knowledgeable in Western philosophy and literature; he graduated from Harvard and read Kant in the original. He can be called one of the most outstanding experts in Western philosophy, who at the same time knew traditional Eastern philosophy very well: he has many works on Korea and China. So I would call him a unique scholar who links Western and Eastern philosophy. He himself is a very private person, and we wanted to open a door to his life, at least slightly. The film took 21 years to make, and those were the years of struggling and pain, because the teacher didn’t want to be filmed, and there were moments when I cried alone as I could do nothing about it. But despite this, there is a great deal of love in Teacher Kim Uchang – something we all lack".
Park Jane: "Kim Uchang didn’t want to be filmed at all. So we kept pushing the limits: figuring out when we could film and when we had to stop. And I had that moral concern in my mind for all these years. I tried to stay a step behind the teacher and at the same time by his side, right next to him, to try to show as much as possible".