Asian Cinema Fund

ACF Asian Cinema Fund

Asian Network of Documentary(AND) Fund

2017 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST Grey Tomb

Category	BIFF Mecenat Fund
Project	Grey Tomb
Director	JANG Jinam
Country	Korea
Director's Profile	The road I used to take to go to the filming site where I worked as a movie crew. The journey on the road was so attractive that it inspired me to infuse that feeling into a screenplay, and that was the very beginning of the ties between me and the northern Gyeonggi Province. Before long, I became totally captivated by the nature of that space through a number of different works I did there, and soon, I started to work on a documentary film project in order to embody this northern Gyeonggi Province area and its people.

Synopsis: There are military′s concrete structures around the DMZ and Seoul. The anti-tank wall, dragon teeth, dugouts, and bunkers. Built under the emergency operations in the 70s, they were neglected after the Cold War, and now are fading away with development.
H, a taxi driver, remembers this as a hideout in his childhood where he used to sneak cigarettes and date girls. To a farmer, L, this was a scary, haunted place. But official memory of the protective wall is actually related with the propaganda of the Park Chung-hee′s government. Structures copied from those of Hitler′s performed its duty for anti-communist ideology for the reign of terror in that era.
The death of Kim, who was born half-black in Paju, resembles the birth and death of these structures. Born in the middle of the Cold War, he lived in a bunker and was killed by strangers because of development fund. The movie aims to dig into the grey tomb, which is the tomb of an era and also that of the truth represented by Kim.

Director's Note: Northern Gyeonggi is at the border between North and South Korea, where the nation′s and individuals′ memories conflicted in the past, and where security and development values are conflicting with each other at present. Since I moved to Uijeongbu, I observed three protective walls along the way home were demolished one by one, and noticed this border is gradually moving.
In the DMZ region, there is still intense tension due to broadcasting toward the South and toward the North. But this border is obviously moving northward. Chasing after the concrete remains disappearing along the border, I felt people′s memories also might be disappearing that way.
Grey Tomb collects memories and stories of those who used to live throughout hundreds of the military′s concrete structures in northern Gyeonggi Province and tracks how they had been intensified and deformed under the anti-communist ideology. Ultimately, it aims to ask who the owners of these massive dark grey tombs are.

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