The Beginning: Towards a Mass Entertainment

Abstract

This chapter examines early film culture prior to the 1920s in order to offer a detailed historical background for the book’s exploration of the major advancement of Joseon cinema since the late 1910s. The first half of the chapter critically scrutinizes socio-political and cultural conditions that influenced the formation of early film culture in pre-colonial and colonial Korea. Equal attention is given to the collective efforts of early film entrepreneurs and exhibitors in creating film exhibition sites, including movie theatres, defining social and cultural functions of theatre space for a society devoid of theatrical tradition, and cultivating film audiences. The second half traces the activities of the first film production entity of colonial Korea: the Moving Picture Unit (MPU) of the colonial government. The author’s attempt to uncover the forgotten history of the MUP ultimately reveals the problematic of Japanese and Korean film historiographies that have pushed this crucial film unit of the empire onto the margin of film history.