2008 – 90 min – New York – Korean & English w/ English subtitles – color
NY Premiere
Distinctions
13th Pusan International Film Festival 2008, Oldenburg Film Festival 2009, San Diego Asian Film Festival 2009.
Synopsis
Sookhy is a young Korean woman who identifies more with her full-blooded American neighbors than with the Korean-American family into which she’s married. When her husband dies, she escapes the disdain of her mother-in-law by forming a friendship with Julie (the American next door.) As the two women spend time together, Julie learns Korean and Sookhy develops tender feelings towards the American husband, John. After a sexual experience that involves all three of them, the Sookhy and Julie ruin their friendship.
Director’s Bio
As director/writer, Soopum’s short films include ISLAND TO ISLAND, winner of a 2002 Student Academy Award, and FISH IN THE SEA IS NOT THIRSTY, an official selection of the 2002 Cannes Film Festival (Quinzaine). MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME, Soopum’s first feature film as a director/writer, was invited to the 2008 Pusan International Film Festival, Gala Presentation, Oldenburg Film Festival, San Diego Asian Film Festival and Athens Film Festival.
As cinematographer, Soopum’s films include MICHELLVILLE (dir: John Harkrider), which screened at the Sundance Film Festival 2005 (American Spectrum); and SA-KWA (dir: Yi-Kwan Kang), winner of the International Critics Award at the Toronto International Film Festival 2005.
Soopum holds MFA’s from American Film Institute (cinematography) and New York University (film directing).
Director’s Statement
As Director I am interested in power play. The way that powerful people feed off the powerless, and the desire for power. There is an irony that interests me. When a person who has always struggled finally achieves a position of power, the punishment that they inflict is the most severe. In Make Yourself At Home, I treat this subject within the framework of the immigration experience, particularly first generation immigrants. The core space of my film is disorientation, the process that a recent immigrant goes through to learn everything all over again. I focus on how the immigrant negotiates foreign terrain, how natives react to her.
I’m using Korean-Americans as a group in my film because I am impressed by their tenacious hold on the past. It is ironic to me that while Koreans who stay on the peninsula form an identity of change, the emigrants identify themselves with that year in which they emigrated. Those who left the old country to live in America are ironically more old-fashioned than those who stayed behind. As a result of this paradox, Koreans and Korean-Americans have a unique relationship, with the latter being living relics.
Trailer
