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A Study on the Socio-Cultural Character of the Korean Small-Gauge Film Society(Hanguk Sohyeong Yeonghwa Donghohoe) ―Focusing on the Bulletin Sohyeong Yeonghwa and Designated Competition Scenarios

  • The Journal of Korean drama and theatre
  • 2025, (84), pp.93~120
  • DOI : 10.17938/tjkdat.2025..84.93
  • Publisher : The Learned Society Of Korean Drama And Theatre
  • Research Area : Arts and Kinesiology > Other Arts and Kinesiology
  • Received : March 7, 2025
  • Accepted : April 13, 2025
  • Published : April 30, 2025

Dong-Hyeon, Geum 1

1경북대학교

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the socio-cultural characteristics of the Hanguk Sohyeong Yeonghwa Donghohoe (Korean Small-Gauge Film Society), an amateur film collective active in 1970s South Korea, through an analysis of previously unexamined primary sources: the society’s internal bulletins Sohyeong Yeonghwa (1972, 1973) and designated scenarios for film competitions (1978, 1979). While existing scholarship has approached the society primarily through newspapers and magazines, framing it within the discourse of experimental cinema, this study seeks a more objective reassessment by investigating the class background, aesthetic orientation, and amateur practices of the group. Findings reveal that the society was composed primarily of middle-class men with a background in still photography, who approached filmmaking not as cinema (in its art-historical sense) but rather as moving pictures—extensions of photographic practice. Their preferences for photogenic subjects such as nature and women reflect a conservative middle-class taste that shaped both their themes and visual style. The technical writings in Sohyeong Yeonghwa emphasized conventions of commercial cinema such as “stable composition” and “good image quality”, indicating little resistance to dominant film grammar. Although the group explored the concept of photogénie under the influence of director Yu Hyun-mok, such engagement remained ideologically and aesthetically constrained. Moreover, two official competition scenarios—Sinrok ui Cheongchun (The Youth of Verdure, 1978) and Geurigo Tto Bom (And Yet Spring Again, 1979)—followed conventional melodramatic narratives and shooting techniques, offering further evidence of the group's aesthetic conservatism. In conclusion, the amateurism practiced by the Hanguk Sohyeong Yeonghwa Donghohoe was not a radical critique of professionalism or mainstream norms, but rather a form of leisure grounded in middle-class male culture, oriented toward stable, apolitical, and respectable visual expression.

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