Factory Complex is a 95-minute documentary shot in South Korea, Cambodia, and Vietnam and deals with labor issues concerning Asian women.
Through an innovative style which crisscrosses between actual interviews with working women and experimental images, the film traces the women's past and present, their inner side and the landscape, and weaves, with no restrictions of ideology, the story of all working people in this age when work is happiness and also fear. The jury stated the reason behind their choice claiming that Factory Complex was "a moving video work that probes the nature of precocity in relation to the conditions of labor for women across Asia.
Factory Complex takes the form of a documentary but with a direct, lightly mediated, encounter with his subjects and their working conditions." Artist Im Heung-soon said, "I want to thank the many women who lived with conviction in their lives and in their workplaces."
This year the Venice Biennale celebrates its 120th year. On odd years, it holds an art exhibition and on even years, it holds an architecture exhibition. It is divided into an exhibition of state pavilions where participating countries select their own representative artists and the main exhibition where the biennale's director invites the individual artists.
Meanwhile, the South Korean pavilion with artists Jeon Soo-cheon (1995), Kang Ik-joong (1997) and Lee Bul (1999) won Special Mentions three consecutive times and last year at the architecture exhibition, the Korean pavilion with architect Cho Min-Suk as commissioner was awarded the Golden Lion.
Im Heung-soon has worked with art and film after receiving a bachelor and master's degree in fine arts at Kyungwon University (currently Gachon University). Arts Council Korea assessed, "It's even more significant for Factory Complex was the first Korean film to be invited to the Venice Biennale. From the perspective of media art, this work expands the range of art interpretation and at the same time has expanded the edges of South Korean film into the world's art field."
May 11, 2015
