UvA Film Club Presents: Timeless Bottomless Bad Movie (1997)

How do we make sense of a movie too bad that no one wants to take credit for? Unfixed staff, making-of structure, three different film formats all together craft a film about good-for-nothing people. Timeless, Bottomless Bad Movie (1997) is frankly that sort of “bad movie.” It’s Jang Son-woo’s attempt to undo all filmmaking conventions possible to deliver a semi-, or more likely, pseudo-documentary about Seoul delinquent youth and middle-aged vagabonds. Staged acts entangled with improvised encounters, self-reflexive yet sensational at times, make us question how “real” everything is and how ethical this realness might be.

Everything unfolds in an outrageously violent and abusive contemporary Korean urban life where young and homeless people negotiate their alienated and disposable status. With a highly disruptive and fragmented structure, Bad Movie rejects a linear spectatorship and plunges us into a raw spectacle of endless liminal sites, billboard-style intertitles, and extreme (often sexual) violence rendered in dim-lights of city nights. 

In short, a Korean cult classic that couldn’t care less about beginning or end. In a Bad Movie, everything stays at the in-between.

The uva film club is a student-run film society of the University of Amsterdam dedicated to create anything related to the cinematic medium. Their main activity is weekly screenings, introduced by students, teaching staff, and sometimes even special guests(!) and followed by a discussion on the film open to everyone. No matter your background, as long as you have an inkling of interest, you are welcome to join!

English Subtitles

TW: Violence, sexual assault, suicide attempt. Viewer discretion is advised.