Bearing Witness in Gwangju with A Taxi Driver (2017)
Description
On this episode, we're leaving the 1960's behind and jumping to South Korea in 1980. In Jang Hoon's A Taxi Driver (2017) we get a wild sampling of genres in a remarkably well balanced film. It's an action film. A single father supporting his daughter story. It’s dramatic and also quite goofy. It’s based on a actual events, but it’s also highly fictionalized. It documents political history while being oddly apolitical at times. And it's a journalism film too.
International treasure Song Kang-ho stars as a Seoul cabbie who's transporting a German journalist to cover what is rumored to be a student protest. They both become unlikely witnesses and participants in the 1980 Gwangju Uprising and the massacre at the hands of governemnt forces.
If you're up for a marathon of South Korean films, here is the five film lineup Aaron mentions that covers the politics and events from 1979-1981:
- The Man Standing Next (2020)
- The President’s Last Bang (2005)
- 12.12: The Day (2023)
- A Taxi Driver (2017)
- The Attorney (2013)
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