Synopsis
 When I opened a Korean email in fall 2007 I didn\'t imagine that I would soon be opening a well-stocked miracle box, the inspiring contents of which would become a film: The Korean Wedding Chest. Even though (or especially because) this carefully packed, filled, and tied-up wooden chest was assembled according to the rules of an honored tradition, it offers a remarkable insight into and overview of modern Korean society. I was inspired to look more closely at the old and new rituals to determine what is old in the new and new in the old.
 
 Program Note
 The 10th IWFFIS produced the film Ten Ten as one of the festival’s tenth anniversary projects. Director Ulrike Ottinger, who is respected by many women directors as a first-generation feminist director of Germany, participated in this project with her film on Korean traditional marriage ceremony, Seoul, Woman, Happiness. This project provided her with important experiences of Korean society. In 2009, some parts of what were incorporated into the feature-length documentary The Korean Wedding Chest. The film premiered in the Forum section of the Berlin International Film Festival, creating a huge amount of interest. As the film’s co-producer, the IWFFIS introduces The Korean Wedding Chest in a ‘special screening’. Through the wedding ceremony, The Korean Wedding Chest keenly observes metropolitan Seoul, and even much more of Korean society, a society in which the old and new, the traditional and modern, Asian and Western cross, clash, and reconcile. The film allows Korean viewers to see the familiar in an unfamiliar light, and thereby ask them to think once again of the dynamics of complexity that form contemporary Korean society. (KWON Eun-sun)