ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2009 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST Garu & Tagio

Synopsis

Garu, who likes roast grain powder, and Tagio are a cheerful and confident lesbian couple. They have been living together for the past two years, and have plans to have a child after marriage. However, Korea is not an easy place for lesbians. They are tired of struggling against the world. Didn’t even Jesus give up talking to people who do not have ears? Thus, they decide to leave. They started living together four days after they first met. Even a fortune teller foretold about them. At a tarot card reading, Garu heard that she will meet a person from another country whose blood type is O. Not long after, she met Tagio who came from America on a blind date! The more coincidences that occur, the more they believe it is fate. Garu and Tagio are happy to make a documentary. They were always conscious of others’ views, but now, they are ready to accept those views through the documentary. Every day, Garu and Tagio ask the filmmaker to shoot this and that. They even ‘set up’ an incident and ‘act’ in front of the camera. We do not know what is ‘real’ and what is ‘unreal,’ but the filmmaker says that a ‘documentary’ is supposed to contain all of it. What a pair of weirdoes and a weird filmmaker.

Director's Note

Although love is a strictly personal domain, the relationship between Garu and Tagio may be controversial. Because of the oppression and control that the society puts upon sexual minorities, ‘despair’ is never missing in their stories. The struggle against ‘despair’ is always the issue. Although they can go picketing or shout, Garu and Tagio struggle in their own way. They ‘choose’ their own happiness. Although the road that they chose to take is not easy, they choose to become lesbians, marry, and have a child. Along with the story, [Garu &Tagio] also experiments with genre. Do documentaries show only ‘facts?’ How should one regard film drama directing in documentaries? Whether it is a documentary or a film drama, the world and facts shown in films are altered and transformed. [Garu & Tagio] is a documentary that contains the question of how one should see the ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ in documentaries.

Festivals

Still Cut

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