The Korean Wedding Chest (2009)
Ulrike Ottinger’s provocative mélange of ethnography, stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the “well-stocked miracle” of Korean wedding chests, assembled according to time-honored customs. This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and present-day rituals, revealing what is old in the new and new in the old. Her inquiry leads us from shamans, temples and priests, to the enchanted maze of 21st-century Seoul, where vendors of medicinal herbs co-exist with high-tech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces. Using film much like a canvas, Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes, traditional rites, ancestral symbolism, dreams of eternal love, and a whole lot of Western kitsch. One of her most acclaimed documentaries, it captures the amazing phenomenon of new mega-cities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act.
Director: Ulrike Ottinger
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Ulrike Ottinger as Narrator |
| Directing | Ulrike Ottinger | Director |
| Writing | Ulrike Ottinger | Writer |
| Editing | Yang Jin-mo | Editor |
| Editing | Bettina Blickwede | Editor |
| Production | Ulrike Ottinger | Producer |
| Camera | Ulrike Ottinger | Director of Photography |
| Camera | Lee Sunyoung | Director of Photography |
