Dialogue with the eco-friendly documentary director, Hwang-Yoon.

"Love, It has been the source of my passion."

-Dialogue the environment documentary director, Hwang-Yoon.-

Hwang Yoon Documentary Director,
during her dialogue with Ewha students

Her passion toward the nature was special than anyone else. She has been consistently speaking about our society's environmental issues through her past documentary works. Sometimes, she was lonely. Sometimes, she asked herself why she was keep filming documentary with that much small budget. 

In her first documentary, She was a girl who got interested into the animal at the zoo. In her second documentary, she had become a grownup women who got serious about social phenomenon, Road Kill. Now, she is one family's mother who has an adorable baby.  Her concern toward her baby's meal plan led to our society's meat-oriented eating style.

Her documentaries have been with her life, her family and herself. 

At Ewha Womans University, Posco Hall, on 22th May, 2014, there was a dialogue between the director Hwang-Yoon and the students of the documentary film-making courses. It was exclusively open to the students of the course.

Hwang Yoon, she is a well-renowned environment documentary director in Korea. Recently, she got the grand-prize for her movie, "An omnivorous family's dilemma(2014)" at the 11th Seoul Environment Documentary Festival, held from 11th May to 18th May, for the Korea Documentary Competition Division. For her notable works, she got a prize at the Yamagata Documentary Festival, one of the three biggest international documentary film festivals in the world. 

She said, "At first, I worked for the telecommunication company after university diploma. I worked  one year but I felt something is lacked in my life. I felt my energy was almost burned out out of boredom."

She continued, "I accidentally went to the movie workshop of the magazine, CINE 21, and since then I started to get interested into the movie film-making."

Her first work as a non-professional director was dealing with the hardship of the movie staffs in the worst situation, "The story of that winter." 

For her second piece, she filmed "Good-Bye(2006)", which deals with the life story of the animals at Zoo.

She told students how she came out with the documentary topics. 
She went to the Zoo in one day of April, without thinking something serious. When she went to the Seoul Zoo, she stopped her step and found out that polar bear was nodding its head. People were acclaiming around the zoo but she felt something went wrong.

"When I saw the eyes of those polar bears, I could feel the sadness from the bear. Ironically, people were cheering for the bear."

Hwang Yoon's Two Documentary works,
On The Road One Day(2006) and Goodbye (2006)

However, the process of filming the movie was not easy. The zoo asked her to pay for the money to film, and also to specify why she want to shoot a film. When she was sitting on the bench, and she sighed, she just felt, "I would just look at the tiger once, and go back."

Luckily, she met the trainer of the tiger. Then, the trainer introduced her to the little baby Krane. Krane became the main story of her film, "Good-Bye."  

"That was the destiny, I am still not sure what might have happened if I did not meet him coincidentally at that time." 

She emphasized that everyone should have their own fingerprint on their own piece. 

"Whenever I shoot a film, whether my movie has my own fingerprint is the main concern of every piece. I hope that your movie (as a future documentary director) can have your own fingerprint on your work."

Roadkill- animals who are dying accidentally on the road.

Her next step was to film about Road Kill, animals who are dying on the road accidentally.  She shoot a film about Choi Tae Hyung, Korea's first scholar who systematically did research about Road-Killing.


It led her to think what the road means to animals, which led her to approach the documentary in the different ways, which made her to put caption from the aspect of the animals.

"I do not say that we should not pursue industry development, what I emphasize is that we need to minimize the development."

An Omnivorous Family's Dilemma

After her 2nd documentary about Road-Killing, she got married with the veterinarian that she got to know through her documentary production, and she gave birth to a baby. "I was just trying to concentrate on taking care of baby."

Later, Foot and Mouth Disease swept over the country.
One day, she got a call from her friend and she persuaded her that Ms. Hwang is the only one  who can shoot the film about pigs who are being discarded. This led her to film her third piece, "An Omnivorous Family's Dilemma," which recently got the grand prize. 

At the end of the discourse, there was time to ask questions and hear answers back from director Ms.Hwang.

"Love."

To the question, what led her to shoot films with passion, she picked "love" as the main power sources. It has been her power, the source of her passion toward documentary.

"Had it not been for the love toward animals, it might have been impossible to film the documentary in this consistent way. Love. That has been my source."

It was such a meaningful time to look into one women documentary director's life and her consistent passion toward the world.  Through today's discourse, I once again confirmed that without love toward your job, we cannot continue.

What is your love?


* If you are interested more into her life story and her recent works, please check her blog.
http://blog.naver.com/oneday2008 (Hwang Yoon Director's Blog)
->It is written in Korean but if you are interested into getting more know about her,