Popular Cultural Experiences and Affective Community Through Motion Picture(Film) Festivals in the Japanese Colonial Period

This paper examines how Motion Picture(film) festivals in the Japanese colonial period were expressions of 1920s colonial popular culture and their significance in creating collective public affect. Motion Picture(film) festivals (hwaldong sajin (yŏnghwa) taehoe) were cultural events showcasing a series of film programs compiled for special purposes and screened in theaters, provincial meeting halls, or rural public facilities for free or cheap admission. These festivals were important as they were a key channel by which to experience colonial popular culture at all levels of administrative jurisdiction, from cities down to counties, towns, and villages. The hundreds of festivals held nationwide in the 1920s were either sponsored by the government or civilians, with the films seeking to enlighten the populace as propaganda along with lectures, fundraisers, and sales being held for promotion. These films were often accompanied by slide shows, performances, songs, theater, and sports, and the festivals themselves were parts of larger entertainment festivals or competitive exhibitions. They also were combined with government-run movements such as the Provincial Improvement Project or Rural Village Promotion Movement, conveying or justifying the methods of colonial rule in a region or inciting and awakening modern communal consciousness and affect in Korean society. The festivals created their own external narratives without regards to the narrative sintrinsic to their films, and the public would be exposed to a sensory experience of modernity and coloniality through participating in these narratives by attending them. The metaphors of comfort and sympathy advanced by the festivals also fostered a sense of community, simultaneously creating an affective community while nullifying the various conflicts within it. A vibrant 1920s created by the March First Movement and its aftereffect of cultural politics was perhaps no more than a brief respite between the violent realities of the 1910s and 1930s-40s