CHOPSO interviewed Yong Yoon who is releasing his first feature In the Land of the Blind that he made while still at UCLA Film School in the 90s for the first time to the world. In the Land of the Blind streams today via AAM.tv!
Let’s talk a bit about the genesis of In the Land of the Blind. When and how did you make the feature film in Los Angeles?
YY: Too long ago. I believe it was 1996 or 1997 when I still was a graduate student at UCLA film school. I luckily got small funding around $50,000 from a Korean businessman. That became the seed for this film. I quickly developed a short script I had into a feature length with a UCLA classmate, Vivian Umino, who also line produced this film.
When you first finished the movie in the early 2000s, why did you not screen it or what happened to the distribution?
YY: When the production was finished, my investor, the Korean businessman went bankrupt. To finish this film, I bought an old Kem and started editing at home in Monterey Park. I was able to finish editing this film but had no budget for the rest. At that time, I headed out to Korea for a possible picture deal, so I brought all my negatives with me thinking I may complete this film in Korea. After a few years in Korea, I made some filmmaker friends and started bagging them to do the rest of the post-production work. I finally completed this film in 2006 and submitted it to Busan International Film Festival. I got accepted to Wide Angle Section. While I was doing the Korean subtitle work, I got a call from a programmer of Busan Film Festival telling me that they can’t screen my film that year for no reason. I got so mad and exhausted, I put everything aside until the summer of 2024, the moment Quentin Lee gave me strength and pushed me to release this film.
I know this is a movie more than 20 years in the making… what were your feelings when you revisited the possibility of releasing it and working on it this year?
YY: I forgot about my motivation and love for film for so many years. Quentin Lee re-lighted my fire and I realized how much I loved filmmaking. It was more than great feelings, but the negatives were lost, the original film scan file was lost as well as the original soundtrack file. All I had was a couple of DVDs that had shitty visual quality. But thanks to the modern technology! I first ripped off the DVD and restored the image using A.I. It is watchable and I’m so excited!
Can you talk a bit about your journey from making this feature, returning to Korea and then releasing it in 2024?
YY: Like I said, I went through a lot to finish this film for the past 30 years or so. There are so many generous filmmaker friends in the US and Korea who helped me finish this film. After all, it’s all about people as film should be so.
What would you have done differently if you were making this movie today?
Find more money? 😊 I would spend a little more time and effort on the script to put it on a higher level, then try to find sufficient funding for the scale of the story.
What would be an advice now you would have given to yourself when you first started as a filmmaker?
Never lose your love for film and your motivation. And stay on the field, not at school. 😊 I mean teaching can be fun and meaningful but think about why you started learning about film in the first place.
What is one thing you want the audience to take away from In the Land of the Blind?
I want my audience to think about what terrible tragedies wars can create and the real meaning of family.
What are you working on now or next?
Quentin Lee kindly offered me to co-work on a story about an unborn child and Itaewon tragedy in 2022 melted in mystery horror genre.
Stream In the Land of the Blind now!
