Film series: How to Live in Disturbed Worlds
How can we claim ownership of our own worlds when they are damaged, precarious, and uncertain? This April, the East Asia Program and Cornell Cinema are pleased to present two Korean films about girls navigating their own desire, tastes, and sense of self while these are harshly challenged.
Both films contain stories of violence in various forms, but by watching these stories together in community, we bear witness the protagonists’ strength and how they embrace different forms of life and love while continuing to move forward.
Featuring:
MICROHABITAT (2018, dir. Jeo Go-woon)
Tuesday, April 14, 6:00pm
Microhabitat (Korean title: So-gong-nyeo) is a 2018 Korean black comedy, directed by Jeon Go-woon. The film asks what really matters if we want to remain ourselves—or hold on to our sense of self—while living under harsh economic conditions. Many Cornellians might relate: we inhabit a world in which our cultural and social capital often does not match our economic capital. Taste is a big part of how we present who we are.
The film centers on Miso, a house cleaner who realizes that she needs only cigarettes, whisky, and her boyfriend to be happy. When both cigarette prices and rent go up at the same time, rather than giving up her small pleasures, she gives up her apartment and begins staying with her old friends one by one. The film follows along on her journey, captivated by her refusal to surrender her personal tastes, joy, and freedom for economic stability, even though that stability itself seems impossible to reach. Through her story, we feel the weight of economic constraints as well as Korean youth’s responses to them.
TAKE CARE OF MY CAT (2001, dir. Jae-eun Jeong)
Tuesday, April 21, 6:00pm
Take Care of My Cat (Korean title: Go-yang-i-leul boo-tak-hae) is a 2001 debut feature from director Jae-eun Jeong and perhaps the best coming-of-age film Korea has ever produced.
Set in the port city of Incheon, the film follows five female friends struggling to keep their friendship after graduating from a vocational high school — an institution that already marks them as having been sorted to the margins of South Korea's relentlessly upward-aspiring society. As their lives move in different directions, the film becomes a critical portrait of class, gender, and the uneven costs of globalization in post-IMF financial crisis Korea.
Released in 2001, Take Care of My Cat feels entirely vital in 2026 and continues to resonate with Korea's socioeconomic pressures and the lives of young women. Cornell Cinema is pleased to present a newly remastered version released by Kani Releasing in celebration of its 25th anniversary.
Both films will be introduced by Jeongsu Shin, LB Korean Studies Postdoctoral Associate in the East Asia Program and curator of this film series.
Free admission! Sponsored by the East Asia Program in the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.
