Director: PARKing CHANce (Park Chan Kyong & Park Chan Wook).

Running Time: 62 Minutes

Synopsis: 141 crowd sourced videos to demonstrate and advertise the city of Seoul.

Having lived around the Seoul area for over three years, BITTER SWEET SEOUL sounded as though it was going to be a much easier and convenient way of returning to one of the greatest places in the world. Thankfully, that’s exactly what it was. Commissioned by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, what sounds like a tourist focused PR video was given gravitas thanks to be handed over to brothers Park Chan Kyong and Park Chan Wook (of OLDBOY fame). On top of that, the film was not shot by some government tutored filmmakers with a manifesto, but instead was crowd sourced, with the people and visitors of Seoul uploading 11,000 videos to express how they feel about the magical city. 141 were selected and edited into the final product.

It’s obvious from the beginning that we are witnessing something very special, as we jump around from stories with narrative, to simple clips that capture a precise moment. The narratives include a woman opening a coffee shop, a foreign couple getting ready to welcome their first born, and a young man hoping to get into a prestigious drama school. Each of these has a beginning, a middle, and an end, but the clips are liberally placed throughout the entire running time, meaning this celebration of Seoul actually builds to an emotional climax. The quick glimpses of Seoul give us demonstrations of street art, interviews with locals, and some archive footage that shows how Seoul was rebuilt after the Korean war.

Some footage is even briefer than that, and yet hold all the majesty of a beautiful photograph. Considering much of the footage is shot on phones, it’s truly amazing to see how creative people could be. One shot sees a little girl dancing to a video screen on the street, and yet the angle does not allow us to see what it is she is dancing to. That is until the filmer moves to adjust the glare appropriately. In one of the vox pops, a young woman is asked what the best thing about Seoul is, and her response is rather expected in that she says “The people,” but that’s the absolute truth. Whether it’s a woman getting angry at her dog for yapping, or an old man impressed with a young woman’s studies, or somebody dressed up like Lady Gaga on the roof of a building. There are some delightful characters here, even if we only meet them for a few minutes.

The images on display would not be as powerful without the music though. We get a feel for traditional and contemporary music, some of which is performed professionally while other clips are taken straight from the buskers of Hongdae. The Park’s have done well in selecting the music to steer away from K-Pop stereotypes and offer us something different. And that could very well be the film’s crowning achievement. It doesn’t want you to feel familiar with your preconceptions of Korea; the North gets very few mentions, as does Kimchi.

It is no easy task assembling so much footage into a product that doesn’t overwhelm the viewer, but the Park brothers and editor Yang Jin Mo, have orchestrated something truly breathtaking. Whether reminiscing about your time in Seoul, or being introduced to the city for the first time, BITTER SWEET SEOUL captures the madness, heart, and genuine joy of such a brilliant place. It may have more of the sweet and not very much of the bitter, but it’s still a wonderful piece that allows Seoul and its residents to speak for itself, rather than telling you what to love about it.

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