Pairing works from Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s studies in film with the artist’s own experiments in film and video, Sentimental Education: Theresa Hak Kyung Cha at the Pacific Film Archive maps the global cinematic influences on a remarkably singular artist.
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Tracing the trial and execution of Joan of Arc, The Passion of Joan of Arc emphasizes the raw emotion of its actors through Carl Theodor Dreyer’s signature austere cinematography, stark sets, and extreme close-up photography of its lead actors.
Films by Maya Deren and Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet—contributors to Apparatus: Selected Writings (1980), an anthology of film theory edited by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha—precede a selection of Cha’s Super 8 and video work from the early 1970s.
The influence of Structuralist film theory is palpable throughout Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s films, particularly in her 1976 film Permutations, which is here paired with White Dust from Mongolia, the artist’s unfinished foray into narrative cinema.
Yasujiro Ozu’s color remake of his 1934 film follows a theater troupe that visits a remote island to meet the lead actor’s illegitimate son. The narrative unfolds as the actor balances his paternal responsibilities with his relationship with the lead actress.
Structured by epistolary relationships between mothers and daughters, Chantal Akerman’s News from Home and Mona Hatoum’s Measures of Distance resonate with the themes of distance and exile rife throughout the oeuvre of Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.