Remembered branches: towards a future of Korean homosexual film

Korean cinema has long labored under an imported Confucian homophobia which, through its effects if not its causes, seems to mirror the Western conception of the closet. Recent cinematic developments in Korea, including a queer film festival in Seoul, are slowly but surely beginning to change that. Using as primary texts the recent Korean gay film Broken Branches and the long-forgotten lesbian film Ascetic: Woman and Woman, my essay hopes to serve as a set of introductory remarks on a queer Korean cinema culture whose surface has only just been broached.