Paris to Pyongyang
An immigrant tale, reimagined. 1950s Parisian elites led by Chris Marker and Claude Lanzmann visit the newly established communist state of North Korea that claims the allegiance of the filmmaker’s grandmother during the Korean War. An autobiographical investigation of family separation, sparked by the voyage of French luminaries and their artistic output – films, photographs and published memoirs – that emerged from this unique intercultural encounter. Ciné‐roman meets diasporic essay film in this prismatic exploration of transnational identities and their dislocations.
| Director | Helen Lee |
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Paris to Pyongyang opens with Helen Lee’s daughter fully submerged in water, hair drifting, limbs unfurling as if memory itself were being preserved. Water holds her, a silent womb before birth. Helen’s voice invites us in: “I asked her to remember what she forgot,” calling her mother to the surface of long-held memory.
Three generations of women come together to give life to Helen’s grandmother, Kim Gwang‑ho’s story. Helen guides her mother’s testimony, and her mother speaks from both archive and ache. On screen, Helen’s daughter embodies her great-grandmother, an active reconciling that moves beyond reenactment into healing. Each woman holds her own space, and together they weave a reclamation of voice and memory that no one voice could carry alone.
Beneath these personal waters flows the current of displacement. Echoes of colonial lines drawn without consent, of families torn from one another. Helen uncovers Moranbong (1958) — the long-buried Franco-North Korean film that was banned for its unflinching war footage — not as spectacle but as a lens on what was lost. The Western gaze is transformed from voyeurism into kinship, from distance into connection.
As water carries these stories forward, the film becomes a space of collective solidarity. It asks us to bear witness, to hold these voices without othering them, and carry what survives erasure in our own hands, to start the healing.
Leila Almawy
Filmmaker and York University Alumna
-
English
32 mn
Language: English
- Année 2024
- Pays Canada, South Korea
- Durée 32
- Producteur Helen Lee, York University
- Langue English, Korean, French
- Sous-titres English
- Résumé court A prismatic and personal exploration recounting the 1950s visit of Parisian elites in the newly formed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
- Ordre 2
Paris to Pyongyang opens with Helen Lee’s daughter fully submerged in water, hair drifting, limbs unfurling as if memory itself were being preserved. Water holds her, a silent womb before birth. Helen’s voice invites us in: “I asked her to remember what she forgot,” calling her mother to the surface of long-held memory.
Three generations of women come together to give life to Helen’s grandmother, Kim Gwang‑ho’s story. Helen guides her mother’s testimony, and her mother speaks from both archive and ache. On screen, Helen’s daughter embodies her great-grandmother, an active reconciling that moves beyond reenactment into healing. Each woman holds her own space, and together they weave a reclamation of voice and memory that no one voice could carry alone.
Beneath these personal waters flows the current of displacement. Echoes of colonial lines drawn without consent, of families torn from one another. Helen uncovers Moranbong (1958) — the long-buried Franco-North Korean film that was banned for its unflinching war footage — not as spectacle but as a lens on what was lost. The Western gaze is transformed from voyeurism into kinship, from distance into connection.
As water carries these stories forward, the film becomes a space of collective solidarity. It asks us to bear witness, to hold these voices without othering them, and carry what survives erasure in our own hands, to start the healing.
Leila Almawy
Filmmaker and York University Alumna
-
English
Duration: 32 minutesLanguage: English32 mn
- Année 2024
- Pays Canada, South Korea
- Durée 32
- Producteur Helen Lee, York University
- Langue English, Korean, French
- Sous-titres English
- Résumé court A prismatic and personal exploration recounting the 1950s visit of Parisian elites in the newly formed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
- Ordre 2
