Lowell Lecture: Screening and Director Q&A with Dai Sil Kim-Gibson
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 27, 2015
CONTACT: Alisa Harris, 617-358-1858, alisahar@bu.edu or Jaclyn K. Jones, 617-353-8972, jkjones@bu.edu
BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY LOWELL LECTURE: SCREENING AND DIRECTOR Q&A WITH DAI SIL KIM-GIBSON
(Boston)—On November 3, Boston University School of Theology will host the world premiere of People Are the Sky: A Journey to North Korea followed by a conversation with the award-winning filmmaker Dai Sil Kim-Gibson.
People Are the Sky is a personal film connecting two ideas: the search for home and ordinary people as the sky. After losing her Iowa farm boy husband Don—her home—in 2009, Kim-Gibson makes a pilgrimage to her place of birth in North Korea for the first time in nearly 70 years, to explore if it is still home. Searching for home in the cities and mountains of the country, she meets ordinary citizens–in-min. Eventually she finds home not in places, not in North Korea as a country, but in the ordinary people.
The film’s title was inspired by Dong Hak, the indigenous Korean religion and philosophy that arose in the late nineteenth century. Dong Hak teaches that God is Ha Nu Nim—he who resides in the sky—and that all people are equal with God, a teaching that elevates common people and gives rise to the saying “People Are the Sky.”
The screening will take place on November 3 at 5:00pm, at 775 Commonwealth Avenue, GSU Auditorium, Boston, MA 02215. The screening will be followed by a conversation and Q&A with Dai Sil Kim-Gibson and Bishop Hee-Soo Jung, Bishop of the North Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. A reception will follow at 7:30 pm.
Dai Sil Kim-Gibson is an author and independent filmmaker whose films have screened at numerous festivals worldwide, in addition to airing on national PBS broadcasts. Focusing on compelling but neglected issues of human rights, her previous films have been called “wrenching and formally inventive” (Village Voice), “hauntingly brilliant” (Asian Week, Los Angeles), and “a film translating mute statistics into human terms” (Business Week Magazine). She is the author of Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women, and the director and writer of the documentary of the same name. A former professor of Religion at Mount Holyoke College with a Ph.D in Religion from Boston University and a federal and state employee, filmmaking is Kim-Gibson’s third career.
Bishop Hee-Soo Jung was born in Kwang hwa do, Korea and came to the United States in 1982. He has served congregations in Wisconsin, California, and Texas since 1982 and currently serves as Bishop of the North Central Jurisdiction of the United Methodist Church. His passionate leadership has been focused on Korean-American churches and cross-racial appointments in urban, rural and suburban churches.
This event is free and open to the public due to generous support from the Lowell Institute. For more Lowell Lectures, please visit www.lowellinstitute.org