장률 감독 영화에서의 경계, 마이너리티, 그리고 여성

The Border, The Minority and Women in the Films of Zhang Lu

The article examines how films of Zhang Lu(<Grain In Ear, 2005>, <Hyazgar, 2007>, <Chongqing, 2008>, <Iri, 2008>) achieve symbolic status in the global film market. His films narrate stories of ethnical minorities, especially Ethnic Koreans in China. Zhang Lu's films symbolize woman characters as a lowest rank of the minority. The places and cities in his films are over-eroticized, and the power relationship among people is materialized through sexual exploitations. Those films substitute women for images of the lower classes, and sufferings of women become an apparatus to see a social violence. This paper will clarify that his films join many issues on the discourse of the minority. His films do that through narratives emphasizing sacrifices and silences of people who suffer from the social oppression. His films become the signifier of the minority, and they are distributed through several international film festivals. At this time, director's identity as an ethnical minority would be considered to guarantee “authenticity” of this ethnography. Zhang Lu's films acquire symbolic value as discourses of the minority that ethnical minorities speak about their own sufferings. In this context, this article examines that his films achieve symbolic status by means of converting women bodies into cinematic sign through film analyses.