The Oscar-winning Korean director Bong Joon Ho will be the subject of a documentary that will debut on Netflix the following year. The documentary, titled “Yellow Door: Seeking Director Bong’s Unreleased Short Film,” is being made by Broccoli Pictures and directed by Lee Hyuk-are.
The movie follows Bong’s search for his first short film, “Looking for Paradise,” which he made while still in college but has not yet published. The documentary will not only shed light on the creative beginnings of a great artist but will also shed light on a time when youthful cinephiles first appeared in South Korea.
Around South Korea, the arts underwent frenetic upheaval in the middle of the 1990s. After decades of oppressive military dictatorship, there emerged a creative explosion. The Busan International Film Festival, which defiantly began screening forbidden Japanese films, CJ Entertainment, which launched the industrialization of the Korean film industry through investments in Dreamworks and multiplex cinemas, and new music acts and talent agencies, which imported foreign sounds and laid the groundwork for the current K-Pop phenomenon are examples of rule breakers and innovators from that era.
Contrary to popular belief, director Bong’s real debut was the stop-motion produced short “Looking for Paradise,” which was released in 1994. According to a statement from Netflix, this 22-minute video was initially exhibited at Christmas 1992 for around 10 members of the film club Yellow Door and has never been seen again. The production firm claims that the documentary unravels the mystery surrounding Bong’s secret filmmaking debut, compiles the memories of the few people who saw it, and recreates a time when cinema fans were ardent.
Meetings with “Looking for Paradise” viewers who reflect on Yellow Door’s activities and recall young Bong, who meticulously maintained Yellow Door’s video archive, are included in the new movie.
In the annals of Korean cinema, Bong played a significant role. He was the first well-known Korean filmmaker to use the streaming service, in addition to creating ground-breaking movies including “Memories of Murder,” “Snowpiercer,” and “Parasite.” Bong finished the 2017 monster movie “Okja” and thanked the studio in public for the film’s huge production budget and the creative flexibility it gave him.