Netflix has a treat in store for Korean cinema fans. The streamer dropped the first trailer on Tuesday for the upcoming documentary The Yellow Door: The Lo-fi Film Club of the 90s, is described as “a cinematic ode to the golden age of Korean cinema’s passion.” (Watch the trailer below.)
The new documentary, directed by Lee Hyuk-rae, takes viewers back to Seoul in the 1990s, when film clubs flourished on Korean college campuses, providing young students with a creative outlet and a platform to study the art of film. Much of the global boom seen in Korean popular culture today can be traced to this free formative period. The country had just emerged from the trauma of the pro-democracy student protests of the 1980s – and their often brutal suppression by the previous authoritarian government – but the 1990s became a carefree dawning era for greater freedom and cultural exploration among the country’s youth.
The Yellow Door: The Lo-fi Film Club of the 90s It traces the memories of members of the Yellow Door Film Club of that era, whose key members included now-legendary director Bong Joon-ho (as well as documentary filmmaker Lee). Decades before he became an Oscar-winning director parasite Korea’s most famous auteur, the fresh-faced Bong, was an integral part of this gathering of film enthusiasts, meticulously managing the club’s video library of cinematic masterpieces from around the world.
“We were the first generation of movie fans,” Bong says in the trailer.
The film captures this brief moment of sheer passion for film in Korea and also chronicles the creation of Bong’s first short film, a stop-motion animation titled Looking for paradisewhich was offered exclusively to Yellow Door members.
“This was my first time creating something with a narrative,” Bong says in the trailer. Fellow film club members also noted the impact of those early efforts. “The essence of Director Bong’s films is really cemented in this one,” another Yellow Door member says in the trailer, with another joking, “I knew it was going to work… but not on this scale.”
Netflix
The Yellow Door: The Lo-fi Film Club of the 90s It is scheduled to have its world premiere at the upcoming 28th Busan International Film Festival, which will take place from October 4-13. It will be released worldwide on Netflix on October 27.
