Under the Banner of Nationalism: The Changing Imagery of Anticolonial Leadership

Chapter 1 focuses on the hero narrative of two nationalist films in particular: Hurrah! For Freedom (1946) and The Independence Association (1959). It first calls attention to these works’ thematic proximity, as well as to the lacunae of the official anti-colonial history of South Korea. These films introduce and conventionalize the dominant narrative of Korean resistance, struggle, and sacrifice under colonial rule by accentuating an alternative space for populist nationalism and political activism. In tandem with the enlightenment discourse of progress, the rise of a public sphere and its depiction in these films inform the spatial practice of nationalism and cast a definitive shadow on the subsequent structuring of colonial space in South Korean cinema.