"Advertising a Dream"/Pitt Hosts Exhibition Of Movie Posters From Post-war South Korea

An exhibition titled Advertising a Dream: Movie Posters From Post-war Korea will continue through March 1 in the foyer of Pitt’s Hillman Library. It features 23 full-color movie posters from the late 1950s and the 1960s. The posters offer a window into a society that looked to film to help heal the social and psychological scars left by the Korean War, according to the Korea Society (www.koreasociety.org), which organized and curated the traveling exhibition.

The exhibition features posters from 11 Korean films. As South Korea recovered from the war, so did its film industry. Melodramas like Hongdoya Ujimara (My Dear Sister Hongdo, Do Not Cry! 1965) and Chikekkun (An A-Frame Coolie, 1963) allowed millions of South Koreans to vent their collective feelings and look to the future, according to a statement released by the Korea Society.

Korean films of the period also reflected the tight social control exercised by South Korea’s authoritarian government, says Ebru Türker, visiting professor of Korean language, linguistics, and pedagogy in Pitt’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures.

The exhibition also includes South Korean posters for 12 American classics, among them Gone With the Wind (1939), The Sound of Music (1965), and Roman Holiday (1953). These films offered South Koreans a glimpse into the land of starlets and leading men.

Cosponsors of the free public exhibition include Pitt’s Asian Studies Center in the University Center for International Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures, and University Library System’s East Asian Library.

The exhibition is running in conjunction with the spring 2007 Pitt course Introduction to Korea, taught by Türker.

For additional information about the exhibition, contact the Asian Studies Center at 412-648-7370 or turker@pitt.edu. For the Hillman Library’s hours of operation, call 412-648-3330 or visit www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/hours/hillman.html.