Host
JO Min-soo

Since her debut in 1983, Jo Min-soo has been considered an irreplaceable actress by showing her unique charisma and unrivaled acting skills in numerous media platforms, including advertisements, TV dramas, and movies. She has participated in various domestic and international film festivals as a judge to support Korean films. She also has supported independent films as well as commercial films with generous affection.

KIM Hwan

Kim Hwan debuted as a broadcaster through SBS’s open recruitment in 2007 and has been active in various fields such as newscasts, radio shows, and sportscasts. He also appeared in shows dealing with current affairs and variety shows such as Please Fix It Duo, Miracle Habits, and Golf Squad, showing his versatile talents.

Opening Performance
SUNWOO Jung-a

Sunwoo Jung-a secures a unique position in the Korean pop music scene. Sunwoo Jung-a's music, which creates her individuality through the freedom to twist, mix, and lightly recreate various genres of clich?s, including jazz, pop, and R&B, cannot be distinguished by simplified diagrams of mainstream and non-mainstream. It also cannot be fully explained by the stiff word ‘experimental.’ Her singing skills, which handle her voice skillfully, maximize the original ‘taste’ of the music, while creating a shock with the atypical carefree style. At this point, it would not be an exaggeration to define her as an artist who makes you feel the evolution of Korean pop music.

Closing & Audience’s Choice

Among the 16 short films invited to the DIAFF, the two most loved films voted by audiences will be screened as the closing films. Also, one million KRW will be awarded for the director’s future production development.

Synopsis
Who am I? Where do I come from? And Why am I here?
This is a domestic play based on Suh Kyung-sik’s autobiographical essay describing his stateless status.

Seoulkedam, a theater company that has been focusing on the existence of various people in the metropolis by working on ‘Seoul Talchoom Project’, collaborated with its trusted artists through a long-time joint research and development based on Suh Kyung-sik’s work.
Suh Kyung-sik, who has constantly come across the question of ‘Who am I?’ in various phases of his life as a Zainichi Korean writer, guides us to the journey into the origin and meaning of modern diaspora life. Facing various exiles who always remain strangers and minorities, the play reminds us of the memories of yesterday’s violence and helps us ask ourselves where we are now and where we should be heading then.
Making use of various mediums like video, sound, and objects in the performance, Diaspora Travel has succeeded in giving shape to the existential senses of the diaspora in a theatrical style.
Diaspora Travel is a story of certain people who don’t belong to either side of the borderline with no choice but to contemplate on the issue of ‘in-between’ space. It is a work that seeks the future world beyond the modern state.

Seoulkedam

Founded in 2010, Seoulkedam creates space for thought on current issues by adapting various absurd happenings in modern cities in the form of ghost stories. Through a new type of play that is not confined to the theater, the company talks about ‘individual issues’ in and out of the community in the street or wherever it is available as well.

Past Productions

The Fox and The Stork, Seoul Talchoom, Invisible City, People at Midnight, Odyssey in Library, Lee Tae-Jun's Series, Young-Ja's 70th Birthday Party, Steppenwolf, Genius of Pain, Junk Times, Raid at Night, Eccentric Village Tour, Seongbuk-dong, Siamese Twin Grandmas, Urban Myth, etc.

In commemoration of the 10th anniversary of the Diaspora Film Festival, the Hospitality Square has returned to the central plaza at the Incheon Art Platform with new attempts to ensure continuity for the next 10 years. There is a pavilion made of wooden pallets, having its formative features woven in accordance with the graphic concept of the festival. Along with the information office and a face-lifted DIAspora Library, there come several events with environmental themes such as a flea market, one-day class, and a large paper-maze experience zone. Busking and outdoor movie screenings are ready to captivate the eyes and ears of the audience. This is where the meaning of diaspora is materialized into a space with various attractions and programs in which the audience will further contemplate the extended concept and meaning of the diaspora.

What would it be like for the first immigrants to live a diaspora life? Here is a chance to experience such a life through a complex maze. It begins when a visitor stamps the passport before their departure, escapes the maze by solving diaspora-related quiz questions, and gets to the arrival gate in the end. Souvenirs are given to those who successfully finish the adventure.

The Hospitality Square meets the Manguk (World) Market that has long been known for its unique styles and supporting cultural diversity since 2016. Under the theme of ‘Eco-friendly and renewable Earth’, there will be a flea market with various attractions such as upcycling and zero waste, as well as handmade items. For the sake of the beautiful and renewable planet, the Manguk Market invites you on the weekend of May 21 to 22 to the festival period.

Based in the town called ‘Baedari’, Darine engages in various activities in the areas of living, culture, art, and education. Collaborating with daily life artists, the act of Darine centers on constructing various shared spaces and leading the culture of communication as well as sharing in an attempt to revitalize local communities and cultural ecosystems.

This is a joint program of the Museum of Korea Emigration History, and the Diaspora Film Festival, which is aimed for those who visit the city to come across various aspects of the life of ‘diaspora’ in different places. The tour begins at the museum where visitors can look back on the journey of immigrants with an experienced cultural tour guide and get a little closer to their early life. The tour will provide an opportunity to think about the meaning of 120 years of Korean immigration to Hawaii.

Sponsored by the Museum of Korea Emigration History

The Museum of Korea Emigration History is the first of its kind in Korea. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the immigration to the Americas, it was built in 2003 thanks to the support from the citizens of Incheon and overseas compatriots to honor the ancestors and their trail-blazing footsteps of the descendants.

This is an opportunity to thoroughly explore Incheon, the first Korean open-port city. There is a map of the DIA-troupe provided to visitors to taste and enjoy the ‘diaspora’ space along the open-port tourist site. You can plan your own tour route with the map and see the special goods of the festival by participating in the event. (Please refer to a separate pamphlet for further information) A guided walking tour with the city’s cultural event organizer is available for those who want to experience every corner of the city in depth.

Sponsored by Incheon Spectacle

The Incheon Spectacle is both a local-content production, a publisher for the magazine spectacle, and an education institution that runs the local community ‘Spectacle University’. It will soon open another community space called the ‘Spectacle Town’ in the town of ‘Baedari.’

Marking its 10th anniversary, the Diaspora Film Festival introduces ‘DIA-necut’, where anyone can take a four-cut photo. (’ne’ refers to four in Korean) Souvenirs are given to those who participate in the event after taking a photo. This is a chance to photograph your precious moments with your beloved ones.

Representing Incheon city, nicknamed a special environmental city, the DIAFF presents environmental education programs to deal with worldwide environmental issues. Several classes, as well as hands-on experience programs by upcycling, are provided to raise interest and more participation in the environment. Among them are making pouches out of endangered-animal shapes, making pencil cases with disposable packaging materials, along with taking simple environment-related classes. Participants will be given eco-friendly products provided by the DIAFF sponsors.

Hospitality Square will be enriched with busking performances on weekends. Lovely musical performances from familiar film soundtracks and romantic jazz performances of French gypsies will be held. Experienced and talented musicians will show fantastic performances to audiences.

Artists
Mulove

‘Mulove’ is short for ‘musical love’ and is a professional musical performance duo that sings love and hope in musical numbers. Mulove specializes in healing performances with lovely and bright musical numbers, and also actively shares their music on their YouTube channel, ‘Mulove TV.’

Gypsy It Up

The exciting swing jazz and free soul of French gypsy met. The team plays music based on gypsy swing jazz and the melancholy romance of French gypsies. The professional musician ensemble of jazz, world music, and classical music will lead audiences to the world of the 1930s French gypsy dance.

Four curators from the education program for curators programmed by Incheon Art Platform present The Raw. The exhibition is an attempt to subtly reconstruct the geography built by systems/standards that are connected to love, such as dating, marriage, and sexuality. It is a gathering of the artworks that make the audience face the contradiction and ambivalence inherent in various forms of love, which have been treated as abnormal. The exhibition runs from May 3rd to May 29th in Gallery 1 (B), Incheon Art Platform exhibition hall, with the participation of 15 artists/teams.

The exhibition consisted of two parts along the double-story structure of the exhibition hall, Gallery 1 (B). Part 1, “Sadness, Another Name for Love” focuses on norms related to love and the ambivalent, fragmentary, and temporary identity of the subject experiencing it. The acupuncture of oriental medicine is a medium for Lee Soonjong's artwork in the center of the first floor of the exhibition hall. It has the polarities of pain and healing in itself. Kim Oksun, Park Seonho, and Lee Eunsil's work sheds light on the internal contradictions of the subjects standing within the patriarchal gender order. Jung Haena draws the culture only for women at the one side of the cisgender heterosexual norms and seeks compatible pleasure. This ambivalence and contradiction are also found in the process of social manifestation and recognition of a single identity. The work of Mooni Perry and Jang Pa deals with these problems, on the identities which is fragmentary and temporary. These will never converge into one.

The second part “Pleasure of Love” inherits the problem consciousness of the first part. But at this time, contradictory, ambivalence, fragmentary and temporary identities without any consistency are not for critique and removal, but for advocacy. The painting of Han Jihyoung which equates changes in the body with changes in gaze, changes in representation methods, and changes in image, takes over the theme of Part 1 on representation. Park Hyein's work imagines other ways to reproduce without passing through the body and tries to break the link between the biological body and identity. Kim Sylbee's work, which examines the principle of circulation of the birth and death of the universe, widens the distance from all these worries and deals with love in a broad context. In the previous works, the overlap between reality and imagination is shaped into fists that seem to be fighting and cheering each other in Kang Nayoung's installation work. The work of Dadboyclub, Kim Hwahyun, and Jeong Doori tracks the reality of our desires and makes the audience face it. Their work avoids the solidity of the existing identity model: one identity in one body. Ryu Hansol's work shows a woman accepting physical pain with pleasure to marry herself. It is in charge of the finale of the exhibition.

This year, the DIAFF is working with SAVE THE CHILDREN which is taking the lead in changing the lives and future of all children. Installed in the Hospitality Square, the SAVE THE CHILDREN booth offers a hands-on program to experience traditional activities of various countries with refugee issues. Hopefully, this will be a chance for visitors to think about the refugees around us and form a correct view of their being.

Sponsored by SAVE THE CHILDREN

This year, the DIAFF is working with SAVE THE CHILDREN which is taking the lead in changing the lives and future of all children. Installed in the Hospitality Square, the SAVE THE CHILDREN booth offers a hands-on program to experience traditional activities of various countries. Hopefully, this will be a chance for visitors to think about the refugees around us.

This year, the UNHCR and Diaspora Film Festival will introduce various aid programs, such as shelter, food, education, and emergency relief, and also show how these supporting programs actually help those in need. There is a hand-on experience program where visitors can make a mask hanger with beads and markers to one’s own tastes. Information is provided on how to support refugees and/or the UNHCR’s activities. Souvenirs are given to those who sign up to support the program.

In association with the UNHCR Representation in the Republic of Korea

The UNHCR is a humanitarian UN organization with its aim to protect refugees and bring a permanent end to the refugee issues. Committed to protecting forcibly displaced people including refugees, the UNHCR has been awarded two Nobel Peace Prizes in 1954 and 1981 in recognition of its contributions to refugee protection.