When the Pomegranate Flowers Bloom

This documentary celebrates the life of former President Kim Dae-joong, who fought for democracy in South Korea and peace in the Korean Peninsula. It marks the 10th anniversary of his passing and covers his challenging journey, from his childhood on an island to his imprisonment, exile, near-death experiences, and ultimately becoming the president.

Cinema Gwangju is the first theater in the Honam-region and the only theater that opened in 1935. The cinema has screened films in its original place up to these days. A musician Gonne Choi invites the seven musicians to share "Gwangju-ness" from her own perspective and they visit the cinema to speak and sing about their own "Withstanding and Existing". This documentary also contains the story of the painter Park Tae-gyu, who continuously has been working on hand-painting movie posters from the 1990s until today.

Kim Dae Jung, who stands next to people in the middle of caotic history! A young businessman Kim Dae Jung recognized the victims of ideology. He decided to be a politician to make his country where people's politic and democracy are rooted. The price of being leave from a guaranteed future and take the first step on a bumby road was kidnapping, death threats, imprisonment, and a death sentence that shook him to the core, but even in his final moments, when he was sentenced to death, Kim never wavered. "Democracy will be recovered. I believe in it." The life of President Kim Dae-jung, a death row inmate who survived from the throes of death, four parliamentary elections, and three unsuccessful presidential campaigns, is etched into the modern history of South Korea.

On December 3, 2024, in Seoul, the President of South Korea Yoon Sukyeol declares the martial law. Troops move toward the National Assembly to seize control. Meanwhile, citizens rush to the National Assembly to block the troops, while lawmakers break through police's barricades at the main gate, climb over the walls to attend the session that lifts the martial law.

In May of 1980, the city is locked down and phone lines are dead because of protests and struggles in demand of democracy. Just when Gwangju was being ignored by the media, Jurgen Hinzpeter, a reporter from Germany, sneaks in despite the danger!

There are people whose lives have been shaken by the 'Gwangju Video'. On May of 1980, the course of their lives changed in front of a huge wave of truth in Gwangju. The people who made and spread the 'Gwangju Video' are also the people who had their bodies on the waves. The hidden stories of these people, the 40th anniversary of the Gwangju Uprising, and the pursuit to trace the missing 4 hours of mass shooting will be revealed for the first time.

KIM-GUN searches for the whereabouts of a young man whose identity has sparked a national controversy over the 1980 May 18 Gwangju Uprising. Starting with the vague memories of those who had crossed paths with him during that time, the film tracks down those who participated in the Uprising as “Citizen Soldiers.” It also traces KIM’s final steps, based on photographic clues found in the firearms he carried and the “Surveillance Truck No. 10” in which he rode. By identifying KIM-GUN, we believe that we can find valuable leads to resolving the ongoing controversy over May 18. Why did a nameless young man join the Uprising? Why did he take up arms? Where has he gone afterwards? It is the answers to these questions that the film seeks.

The title Good Light, Good Air is oddly paradoxical. Keenly working at the point where his artistic identity and persistent attention on modern Korean history meet, director Im in this film focused on where the history of oppression and struggle intersect between Gwangju and Buenos Aires. In both cities, a great number of people who fought against the dictatorship were slaughtered and disappeared. The people of both societies still live with that trauma. When the testimonies of the victims of the two cities cross over, the film gives us chills as the eerie history of the two is very similar. Through Good Light, Good Air, director Im asks us how we will remember the past from where we stand right now.

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No description available.

Gwangju is known as a key city of democracy in Korea. Kim Hwan-gyung, a young media artist, begins to live in a typical slum, Gwangcheon-dong. The residents share stories about the lives of the early urban poor, the first Gwangju democracy movement, and concerns about rapid redevelopment. Gwangcheon-dong is scheduled to be demolished and disappear entirely by 2024.

The movie is a compilation of the movie "Wilderness" in which a member of the airborne unit who killed a girl during the Gwangju Democratization Movement burned himself to death with remorse and "Mr. Kant's Presentation", the story of a man who wanders around as a result of torture after participating as a civilian army.

This year is the 30th anniversary of the Gwangju Democratization Movement. Though the country commemorates the event as the official historical records, it does not include any 'real' accounts of the people who experienced it firsthand. The students who were part of the movement; the female vendors who made rice balls for the students; the female high school students cooked at the government building; now, past their middle age, they live as ordinary citizens in Gwangju city. How is the event remembered by these people?

On May 27, 1980—the last day of the Gwangju Uprising—students at Sinheung High School in Jeonju defied martial law. Their teacher disciplined them to protect them, but this act of love left forty years of misunderstanding. Now in his nineties, the teacher reunites with his former students to finally offer each other the reconciliation they had long set aside.

There is HWAPYONG Restaurant with full of hopes of the family of three generations. Grandfather, the first-generation owner, and the first son, the second-generation owner, who lives as a fugitive after being branded as a communist and his wife and Cheol-soo’s mom who has to work hard by juggling work and family without complaint. The second son, Cheol-soo’s uncle, who sometimes acts like a child with an excuse of being the second son but loves Cheol-soo more than anyone and seriously cares about the restaurant. To the third generation, young Cheol-soo, family is the most precious. By the time when ‘Seoul Spring’ longing for democratization came to nothing due to ‘Retreat from Seoul Station’ in 1980, there were a series of peaceful protests in Gwangju, Jeolla Province. In warm May, a large dark cloud is looming over HWAPYONG Restaurant, the home and everything of this ordinary family of Cheol-soo, in the middle of Gwangju.

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