Biography
KyungMook Kim (b.1985) is a filmmaker based in Seoul. Ranging from short and feature films to documentaries, his films explore the precarity of marginalized individuals such as homosexuals, transsexuals, sex workers, and North Korean defectors. Through his works, he has attempted to reveal the ambiguity between appearance/disappearance, visibility/invisibility, and presence/absence. He made his directorial debut with Me and Doll-playing (2004) at the age of nineteen. Since then, he made seven films, including the “Things Trilogy,” which consists of Faceless Things (2005), Stateless Things (2011), and Futureless Things (2014). His films have been selected for and received awards in numerous international film festivals such as the Venice Film Festival, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, the BFI London Film Festival, the Museum of Modern Art and the New Museum. More recently, his works have been invited and screened as retrospectives at the Indie Space (South Korea, 2016), Black Movie Film Festival (Swiss, 2013), Taipei Film Festival (Taiwan, 2012), and Festival du Film Coréen à Paris (France, 2012). Kim also worked as a journalist and a columnist for a number of publications since 2001. He served on the editorial board of Korea’s only independent film magazine, Independent Film, (2006-2007), and served also as a committee member of the Association of Korean Independent Film and Video (2011-2012). In 2015, he objected to the mandatory military service following his strong belief in pacifism, and he was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. He was paroled in 2016 after one year and three months of imprisonment.
