Kim KyungMook
20 mins
In 2015, filmmaker Kyungmook Kim was sentenced to 18 months in prison for objecting to Korea’s mandatory military service. He then came out as a queer, which left him in solitary confinement, isolated from other prisoners for thirteen months, until his parole. Kim’s haunting VR work 5.25㎡ recreates a virtual cell of the same size, 1.5 x 3.5 metres, enabling viewers to experience a prisoner’s sense of time and space. We encounter the figure of an inmate wandering like a ghost, while hearing his voice as he writes a letter to a friend who is serving in the military. This powerful work uses VR to recreate a claustrophobic environment in which contact with others is completely prohibited, while acknowledging the possibilities of a rich, meditative inner life.
![Queer East -](https://queereast.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/5.25sqm_still_1.png)
![Queer East -](https://queereast.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/5.25sqm_still_2-scaled.jpg)
![Queer East -](https://queereast.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/5.25sqm_still_4.png)
Kim KyungMook is a filmmaker based in Seoul. Acclaimed for their trilogy which consists of Faceless Things (2005), Stateless Things (2011), and Futureless Things (2014), Kim’s films have screened and received awards at numerous international film festivals, including Venice, Rotterdam, and London. In 2015, they were sentenced to eighteen months in prison after objecting to South Korea’s mandatory military service. They are currently majoring in Visual Arts (DFA) at Yonsei University’s Graduate School of Communication & Arts.
Presented in partnership with BFI Expanded.