프로그램 노트

Program Note 

Apocalypse Now is often hailed as a work that captures the horror and madness of the Vietnam War with the utmost realism. However, for some, that very vividness can be perceived in a different light. Take, for instance, a young couple who became refugees after boarding a boat to escape Vietnam in 1975, at the tail end of the war. After becoming so-called “boat people” and arriving at a refugee camp in the Philippines, they appeared as extras in director Francis Ford Coppola's film, which was being shot in the Philippines and Thailand at the time. We Were the Scenery, created by weaving together the recollections of the now-elderly couple with their current lives, film scenes, and home video footage, offers a sharp and reflective commentary on a film that has attained the status of a classic, and further, on the relationship between cinema and reality. The Vietnamese people in the refugee camp, including the couple, find themselves in a position where they must reenact the very scenes of war they had desperately tried to escape only a short while ago. They become the backdrop for white characters lamenting the pain and scars of war, only to quickly disappear. Watching the film scenes again, the elderly couple re-summons those who had to vanish in such a way—not as backgrounds or extras, but as beings with their own names and histories. This is a vividness that Apocalypse Now could never capture. We Were the Scenery is likely not just a story about the limitations or contradictions of cinematic representation. It is about a certain kind of history that seeks to exist alone by using countless small lives as its backdrop, and at the same time, it is about the memories that, nevertheless, keep returning. (KANG Jinseok) 

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Presented in partnership with Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival