‘새로운 영화 읽기의 제안’ 혹은비판적 시네필리아의 형성

‘Proposing a New Reading of Film,’ or Formulating a Critical Cinephila: On the Activities of munhwahaggyo-seoul [Cultural Institute Seoul] in the 1990s’ Korean Film Culture

This paper chronicles and examines the activities of munhwahaggyoseoul[Cultural Institute Seoul (CIS)], a private cinemathèque that wasfounded in 1992 and built a stronghold of an alternative film culture inthe 1990s’ Korean film, sphere. After its national political liberation,South Korean film culture in the 1990s witnessed the burgeoning ofdedicated film viewing ignited by the foundation of new film magazines(Cine21 for weekly, and KINO for monthly), private cinemathèques,university cine-clubs, and non-university institutions dedicated to theeducation of humanities. In this paper I demonstrate that amongst allthese cultural players, the CIS deserves particular attention in terms of thedevelopment of cinephilia due to its key activities (screening and discussion,education and study teams, and publication) and their underlying ideas. Inso doing, I argue that the CIS’ actitvities in the 1990s were not simply aremarkable attempt to regionalize Henri Langlois’ archetypical cinemathèquein the form of videothèque despite the lack of celluloid, but they signalleda dialectics of love and oblivion, of enchantment and disenchantment, asthe underlying sensibility of Western cinephilia. While the CIS’ regular and special screenings and their accompanieddiscussions were grounded in the auteurist model of cinephilia, other actitivies such as promoting study teams and publishing the outputs oftheir studies exemplified the collective’s extensive interests in introducingmajor tenets of contemporary film theories (psychoanalysis, genre studies)and critical philisophy (postmodernism) and using them to critically rereadthe canons of Western cinema as well as the history of Korean cinema. The latter activities as notable uses of disenchanement, promoted arenewed recognition of cinema in the Korean society of the time in thesense that the theories and critical frameworks offered the devotedspectators the repertoire of the broader questions on cinema—film’sessence, cinema and society, and cinema as a cultural practice—than filmas entertainment. Considering all the activities, I argue that the mostcrucial role of the CIS was to formulate and cultivate critical cinephilia inthe cultural sphere of Korean cinema in the 1990s, a cinephiliac sensiblitymarked by the productive tension between the devoted viewer’sfascination with cinema and her/his critical engagement with it.