Beef star Steven Yeun and Star Trek’s John Cho reflected on the ongoing Hollywood strikes and the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) at Busan international Film Festival today (October 6).
At a press conference to mark the festival’s special programme around Korean diasporic cinema, the assembled press were advised not to ask any questions about the US films or TV series made by members of the panel as SAG rules restricted them from making any comment.
However, when asked about the impetus behind the strikes, Yeun said: “I think the strike is a very righteous act of making sure that we insure and protect artists, and those who are living an actor’s life and a writer’s life. We live in a commerce-driven world and sometimes the bottom line of money gets in the way of understanding the lives of individuals.
“There are many people who don’t have safeguards and don’t have the ability to weather the storms. I sit here with so much privilege, to be here and to be able to talk about it. But there are people that don’t get to even have a chance to weather the storms of what is coming in the way that the business is changing. So it’s proper that we ask for what’s right, and we protect the future of the craft.”
Yeun starred in Lee Chang-dong’s Burning, which is screening as part of BIFF’s Korean Diasporic Cinema special programme, and is allowed to discuss that film with audiences as it was a Korean production. But he could not talk about past roles in Minari, for which he was Oscar-nominated, and The Walking Dead or upcoming titles such as Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts or sci-fi drama Love Me, in which he plays opposite Kristen Stewart.
SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers continued talks this week over a proposed three-year contact, as the strikes over streaming residuals and the impact of new technologies such as AI nears the three-month mark.
“I’ll just speak briefly to AI,” said Cho, whose 2017 drama Columbus and 2018 thriller Searching are screening at BIFF. “What I’ve seen in the entertainment industry is a little bit of an echo of a lot of other industries, where automation has put people out of work. AI is one example of putting humans out of work.
“Now, for me, the point is human expression. The point – when I go to see a movie – is to see people enacting a human drama, and to have an experience with an audience watching human expression. Behind the scenes, if we start taking out people, the art form is going to suffer.
“The way the union’s help is to help ensure that outcome is to professionalize what we’re doing and so when we fight for better wages, and better compensation across the board, it helps ensure that people stay in the business, continue to work, become better, and then the art form becomes better as people have more experience and can do it continuously because they’re making enough money.”
Bridging East and West
Also on the panel of Korean American talent was actor-director Justin Chon, who graduated from a supporting role in Twilight to directing Gook, Jamojaya (screening at BIFF) and four episodes of Apple TV+ immigrant drama Pachinko.
While Yeun could not comment, Chon expressed how Netflix series Beef built a bridge between East and West.
“What I love about [Beef] is that it really bridges that gap,” he said. “I really think that show did such an incredible job of taking the things that matter to both east and west audiences and put it into one stew. That show has so much “han” [a uniquely Korean emotional state of grief, resentment, rage, regret] that we do not see in American film and television. That is why it has become so engaging for American audiences… and people in Korea can also watch it and feel incredibly engaged.”
The fourth member of the panel was Minari director Lee Isaac Chung, who watched the film with an audience in Busan for the first time in three years. “I felt like it was important for me coming to Korea, to a place of my family and my ancestors, to watch it with the audience and I felt very touched by it,” said Lee.
The director, making his fifth trip to the festival in South Korea, reflected on how everyone on the panel had to forge a career in the US without much in the way of role models. “When you’re working in the US as a Korean American, none of our parents did this in the US – they didn’t make movies,” he said.
“All of us had to figure out our own path and our own way of making films. It was driven by a passion inside. There’s a lot of commonalities with Koreans here. A lot of the cinema here is so uniquely Korean. It’s a cinema that’s born out of, “Well, let’s figure it out ourselves, and not look to other models.” That kind of work has been the most interesting, and maybe what is interesting to people all around the world.”
BIFF runs October 4-13. The Special Program in Focus: Korean Diasporic Cinema comprises six films: Minari, Burning, Jamojaya, Searching, Columbus and Past Lives.
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