The Korean Wedding Chest

Ulrike Ottingers provocative mélange of ethnography stunning tableaux and baroque vignettes was inspired by what she calls the wellstocked miracle of Korean wedding chests assembled according to timehonored customs This exploration of love and marriage in South Korea looks closely at ancient and presentday rituals revealing what is old in the new and new in the old Her inquiry leads us from shamans temples and priests to the enchanted maze of 21stcentury Seoul where vendors of medicinal herbs coexist with hightech beauty salons for wedding couples and secular marriage palaces Using film much like a canvas Ottinger creates a modern fairytale flush with mythological heroes traditional rites ancestral symbolism dreams of eternal love and a whole lot of Western kitsch One of her most acclaimed documentaries it captures the amazing phenomenon of new megacities and their contradictory societies caught in a balancing act