The Trial
Description
Jungwha Jung has been working for four years on a trilogy project in different genres with the novel The Trial by Franz Kafka as the source material.
The first part, 소송·과정 | Der Prozess·Der Prozess, was exhibited as a film installation, and the second part, The Trial, was created by editing the 6-channel film shot for the film installation and additional footage taken in the exhibition hall.
And the third part, Before the Law, consists of an animated film, an object, a discussion video about Before the Law and Kafka. A brief description of the content of the film "The Trial", which was created as part of such a complex project, is as follows.
The Trial tells the story of the protagonist K., who is arrested without knowing the reason and then tries to prove his innocence. Although Kafka wrote the apocalyptic chapter at the time of writing this novel, it was left unfinished, in which K. is killed in an absurd way. If you read such a story, it could be a story in which he dies without revealing his innocence, even though he was unjustly arrested, and that is a shame.
However, Jung's film ends with a scene in which K. fires his lawyer, who is no longer helpful to him, and in contrast, the last shot of Block, the merchant, who becomes the lawyer's dog and clings to him. The reason for this is that the ending can be seen as part of the whole process, or that the focus of the story is on something else entirely.
Rather, the details, such as the painter Titorelli explaining the three ways he can save the arrested K., sound very logical but contradictory. By emphasizing these texts, the film tries to foreground the philosophy of constantly delaying the event and prolonging the situation, rather than the final result.
Staging through artistic means also clashes with the cinematic method. Elements such as the continuity for a homogeneous space in the general film method, Point of view to assimilate with the characters in the film, and line of movement to grasp the direction in the overall space are segmented and fragmented, making it impossible to engage in the fantasy of the film.
Through the stuffy air of law-related spaces, the contiguity of law and everyday space, the desire of the people around K. moving like a gear machine, and the ambiguous detours of K.'s escape attempt, Jung wants to present that the surrealistic elements of the novel are a hyper-realistic life story.
Starring
Dhasol Kim, Daegi Kim, Taehwan Kim, Jinwook Baik, Dongtak Yang, Jongyeon You, Sanggu Lee, Jeongyeon Gang
Guest starring
Yura Kal, Minsoo Kang, Sooyeon Kang, Jooyoung Kwak, Haneui Kim, Catherine Kim, Youngnam Kim, Jisun Kim, Chanu Kim, Sangjoon Park, Seungjin Park, Yongseok Park, Hyungji Park, Soyoung Bae, Kieun Beck, Hyunji Shin, Hyunkyoung Oh, Sinhae Yoon, Kwanhee Lee, Minji Lee, Soyoung Lee, Soyo Lee, Songhee Lee, Seungil Lee, Taegu Lee, Eunsol Lee, Eunhee Lee, Sangbin Im, Hohyun Jang, Daehyun Jung, Minho Jo, Insil Choi, Jongun Choi, Seokjun Ha, Sooyeon Hwang
Credits
Director, Executive Producer, Film editing
Jungwha Jung
Screenplay : based on the novel The Trial by Franz Kafka
Jungwha Jung
Director of Photography
Byeongjung Kim
Assistant directors
Seoungbum Hong, Youngnam Kim, Yura Kal
Line producer
Kiyeon Hwang
Music composed by
Siegfried Koepf
Camera crew
Seungmin Shin, Moonhyung Lee, Solhee Kim, Jaeyoung Lee
Makeup
Eunsol Lee
Art director
Jungwha Jung
Set designer crew
Yura Kal, Kieun Baik, Eunsol Lee, Siegfried Koepf, Kiyeon Hwang
CG, DI, title and subtitles
Sooyeon Hwang
Simultaneus Recording
Youngmin Park, Chosun Hong
Sound editing and mastering
Siegfried Koepf
English subtitles based on Breon Mitchell’s translation of The Trial, Schocken Books, New York, 1999.
Supervision of English subtitles
Soyo Lee
Special thanks
Casting support
Youngnam Kim, Sanghoon Moon, Sekwon Aan, Geunah Lim
Stage Prop provided by
Yura Kal, Namshin Kwak, Kyunghwan Kwon, Myongok Kim, Sungwon Park, Dongku Yun, Jungbin Lee, Daehyun Jung, Jeongyeon Gang, Heeyoung Jung, Siegfried Koepf, Jiwoo Chae, Okran Han, Kiyeon Hwang, Sooyeon Hwang
Waitingroom provided by
Younghee Kang at Boan Books
Location
Korean National University of Arts, Art Space Boan 1 at Boan1942
Related Text
"Artist's note about the exhibition Before the Law/Vor dem Gesetz", by Jungwha Jung
Exhibition
November 06–17, 2021, "Before the Law/Vor dem Gesetz", SPACE ONSU, Seoul