The Korean Wedding Chest
- Documentary
Overview
Ulrike Ottinger’s provocative mélange of ethnography, stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the “well-stocked miracle” of Korean wedding chests, assembled according to time-honored customs. This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and present-day rituals, revealing what is old in the new and new in the old. Her inquiry leads us from shamans, temples and priests, to the enchanted maze of 21st-century Seoul, where vendors of medicinal herbs co-exist with high-tech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces. Using film much like a canvas, Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes, traditional rites, ancestral symbolism, dreams of eternal love, and a whole lot of Western kitsch. One of her most acclaimed documentaries, it captures the amazing phenomenon of new mega-cities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act.
Details
- Status
- Released
- Release date
- October 1, 2009
- Original language
- English
- Spoken languages
- German, Korean
- Cast
- Ulrike Ottinger
- Director
- Ulrike Ottinger
- Writer
- Ulrike Ottinger
- Producer
- Ulrike Ottinger
- Cinematography
- Lee Sunyoung,Ulrike Ottinger
- Budget
- Not recorded
- Revenue
- Not recorded
- IMDb
- tt1381280