Shim: American Opens a Cafe at the DMZ
“The DMZ is dreaming again”
2024•NR•17m•10.0•Released
DocumentaryWarHistoryAction
A cafe is growing, tucked in to the mountainside air raid shelter of the DMZ borderlands. A light light flickers, illuminating the past, present, and future. I'll see you at the DMZ! Shim was a free, one-day pop-up cafe staged in Yangji-ri village’s air raid shelter at the Korean DMZ. Referencing Korean cafe culture’s fixation on third place, the DMZ’s evolution from security tourism, to ecological peace tourism, and its repurposing as art production site, Shim attempts to intervene and align the past and present. Yangji-ri was one of many minbuk propaganda villages established by the Park Chung Hee regime in the 1960s to showcase the farming bounty and prosperity of the south for a North Korean gaze. The village was formerly part of the Civilian Control Line (CCL) until 2013 when it was reterritorialized as a normal part of South Korea.
Director
Kim Westfall
Budget
$100M
Languages
English, Korean
Cast
Kim Westfall
American Artist
Villagers
Themselves
DMZ
Self
Kim Westfall
Korean cafe worker
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