On Political Moods and Cold War Korean Film Melodrama

Travis Workman (University of Minnesota) will present his recently published book, Political Moods: Film Melodrama and the Cold War in the Two Koreas (UC Press, 2023). Melodrama films dominated the North and South Korean industries in the period between liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 and the hardening of dictatorship in the 1970s. The book's aim is a new way of historicizing the cinema of the two Koreas in relation to colonialism, postcolonialism, war, and nation building.