When we think of “diasporic cinema,” we often imagine works that explore diasporic identity through characters and situations. Abderrahmane Sissako, a master of 21st-century African cinema, has long grappled with the question of alternative cinematic formsㅡforms that capture the lives of those adrift, unable to find a place to settle, and the landscapes that surround them.
This lecture will examine the notion of “diasporic form” through a close reading of Bamako, the film that brought Sissako international recognition. It will also explore how his work connects with broader movements in the history of cinema from sub-Saharan Africa.

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha speaks of how, under the rule of those who seek to steal language, the people of colonized Joseon still sang like birds.
She speaks of a woman without a language of her own ㅡ of how she can write everything without writing anything at all.
Such writing, she says, cannot be read in the light.
To read Dictee, then, is to follow a woman's voice into the dark.

Cha's woman tries to give bodies to voices ㅡ
so that the stories of history are not left behind as pages of a finished past,
but kept alive, here and now, flowing.

Instead of repairing the broken history into a flawless tale,
the woman writes in the form of patchwork ㅡ exposing the damage itself.
Instead of narrating history with yet another single voice,
she tries to return the voices erased from within history to those they belonged to.

That is why Dictee is not a book of visible text, but a book of voices ㅡ meant to be read aloud. Through her reading performance, writer Jang Hye Ryeong seeks to convey what it means to see what cannot be seen, to hear what has not been heard.

From the streets of 2025, can we see the streets of 1979, of 1960?
Can we hear those voices?

And if we canㅡ
can we answer them?

In 2021, as U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan, the country rapidly fell under the control of the Taliban, an Islamic militant group. This turn of events raised urgent concerns over the safety of Afghan locals who had assisted Korean personnel involved in reconstruction efforts. In a critical moment, the South Korean government decided to evacuate 391 Afghan collaborators under the status of “special contributors.” Among them, 157 resettled in the city of Ulsan in February 2022.
For its 13th edition, the Diaspora Film Festival seeks to highlight the stories of Afghan refugees in Ulsan. This rare case presents a narrative distinct from the 2018 Yemeni refugee situation in Jeju and the ongoing conflict surrounding the Islamic mosque in Daegu since 2021. In Ulsan, a truly unprecedented development is unfolding ㅡ where native residents and migrants are forging a shared narrative in a way that Korea has never experienced before. In this sense, Ulsan may be the first to live the future.
Joined by two special guests, the program will explore the past, present, and future of South Korea as a “multicultural” society. (LEE Jong-chan)