Saturday, February 17th
12:50 — 3:00pm
Naval Heritage Center
$11 IN ADVANCE HERE OR AT THE DOOR
Screens as part of Really Real Documentary Shorts
9 AT 38
Directed by Catherine Lee
South Korea / 2018 / 18mins / East Coast Premiere
Hyungjoon Won, a Juilliard-trained violinist, is closer than ever to realizing his pursuit of the last seven years: a first joint concert by North and South Korea. Due to prohibitions in cross-border movement, musicians from the two sides would straddle the 38th Parallel, the most militarized border in the world. It is where soldiers stand mere feet apart, ready to resume battle at a moment’s notice (the Korean War never officially ended). In the week leading up to the concert, inspired musicians gather from around the world to Seoul to partake in the effort but military aggression, geopolitical paralysis, and apathy threaten to derail a dream that many called crazy to begin with.
Director Bio:
Catherine Lee is an award-winning filmmaker, as well as humanitarian worker with experience in 17 countries across Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Born in South Korea, she dedicated her studies at Yale and Harvard universities, and a decade of professional work to follow, to what she considered global injustices. Catherine saw social change projects fail over and over again. Concluding that human hearts must be moved for any sustaining individual or societal change, she left her full-time job with the world’s premiere international development organization to begin storytelling via film. In addition to 9 AT 38, her directorial debut, Lee has produced films for European and Asian broadcast outlets. Her latest independent project is a feature documentary about a dozen youth mobilizing to stop the war in South Sudan, “the world’s youngest and most broken country.” Like violinist Won, Catherine believes music is a conduit to change. As a vocalist, she has sung in performances ranging from rallies on the steps of the Supreme Court in Washington DC to a broadcast Martin Luther King commemoration. In addition to filmmaking, Catherine consults to international organizations, most recently the UN and World Bank, as a project impact evaluation specialist.
