Music professor's film poster exhibition evokes bygone era

Daejeon Creative Center run by Daejeon Museum of Art, is the right place to be if you want to travel back in time to 60 years ago. Initially built in 1958 as a quality inspection center for agricultural products, the current creative center ...

Lee Jin-weon, a professor at the Korea National University of Arts, explains the Korean version of the French film poster “Breathless” (1960). [MOON SO-YOUNG]

Daejeon Creative Center, run by Daejeon Museum of Art, is the right place to be if you want to travel 60 years back in time. Initially built in 1958 as a quality inspection center for agricultural products, the building where the creative center is located was designated a National Registered Cultural Heritage of Korea in 2004.

Inside the building, film posters of 1950s movies such as “Ben-Hur” (1959) and “Some Like It Hot” (1959) are framed and hung on the walls as part of an ongoing exhibition titled “The Face of Cinema, Arts on the Street.”

The Korean film poster for “Some Like It Hot” (1959) [DAEJEON MUSEUM OF ART]

The vintage film posters will indeed evoke feelings of nostalgia for film maniacs from the 1950s. But for the younger generation, the posters might look like props from some period drama series.

Fifty-seven foreign film posters printed between the 1950s and 60s are on display at the exhibition that runs through Aug. 27. All these posters are from the collection of Lee Jin-weon, a professor of Korean traditional art theory at Korea National University of Arts.

Surprisingly enough, Lee’s major is not film but musicology. You can find a video clip of Lee explaining Korean ancient music at the National Museum of Korea's ongoing exhibition “Companions on the Eternal Journey: Earthenware Figurines and Vessels from Ancient Korea.”

What made Lee, a professor of traditional Korean music, turn into an ardent collector of vintage film posters?

“I’ve been collecting phonograph records for my research and a lot of them were movie soundtracks. So I began collecting vinyl records of these soundtracks. I wanted to organize [what I knew and had] so I wrote a book titled ‘Study on the History of Korean Film Music’ in 2007. After publishing the book, I became more interested in films. Most of the soundtrack albums use film posters for their album covers and this interested me.

“Since I was a little kid, I used to collect hundreds of film cards because I loved posters. So I began collecting film posters.”

The Korean version of the film poster “Ben-Hur” (1959) [DAEJEON MUSEUM OF ART]

Between the 1970s and 1990s, Korean theaters used to give out film fliers in the form of photo cards for promotional purposes.

Lee has collected about 1,200 film posters so far. His primary focus is foreign films, especially from the 1950s and 60s. He has about 240 foreign film posters from that specific period.

“The Korean Film Archive keeps track of Korean film posters but there were few people collecting film posters of foreign films so they were on the verge of disappearing,” Lee said.

“This is visual art after all. In the 1950s and 60s when there was no public art, these colorful posters stimulated the inner artist of people walking on the gray street. Now these posters can be used to learn about the era when they were produced. So I thought these posters should be collected [by someone else].”

As he was collecting the posters, Lee began serializing postings on the theme of rare film posters as a guest writer between 2019 and 2021 on a blog run by a person whose pen name was Rok. Lee’s postings became the basis of his current exhibition.

On the first blog posting, Lee compared the Korean poster of “Plein Soleil” (1960) featuring actor Alain Delon to other versions of the film posters printed in France and Japan. You can see the Korean version of the poster at the current exhibition.

“We imported foreign films in the 1950s and 60s via Japan. In doing so, we also used Japanese posters.

“There was this person who was skillful at erasing Japanese letters on posters because it is a sophisticated job. He had to erase the letters, not the background and then added Korean letters. Korean film posters were similar to those of Japanese all in all but the interesting thing is the Korean versions had somewhat different details.”

As Lee was uploading postings on the blog, Lee compared Korean versions of film posters to those from other countries. Of the 100 film posters featured in his postings, he analyzed each film poster in this manner except one that he failed to obtain.

Lee continued, “It’s surprising that more than 100 films were imported as of 1959 and it’s even more surprising that the number of Korean films produced that year outnumbered the number of imported films.”

It was only a few years after the end of the Korean War, but Koreans were passionate about filmmaking, even in poor surroundings and the enthusiasm eventually led to the global success of Korean films.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Foreign film posters of the 1950s and 60s are put on display at the Daejeon Creative Center run by the Daejeon Museum of Art. [DAEJEON MUSEUM OF ART]

Q. It seems you are particularly drawn to a once commonplace practices that soon disappeared over time. A. I think [collecting film posters] is connected with my study of traditional Korean music. Much of traditional Korean music is not documented well but we try to find missing pieces from 78 rpm records that came out between 1907 and 1965. The records have too much white noise but they have tremendous value. As I look into the images of [soundtrack] records, I think these images are similar to traditional music that is disappearing. They were loved at certain times but later forgotten. I thought someone needed to preserve them. I paid particular attention to film posters containing information on the music scene of the past. For example, there is a promotional phrase written on the poster of the German film “Girls in Uniform” (1958) that Song Min-do, a popular singer at the time, sang a theme song for the film [the Korean version]. This is important news in music history.

Didn't you major in chemistry in college? I learned tungso (a traditional bamboo flute] and daegeum (a larger traditional bamboo flute) before I was accepted to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. I made a club to study gugak (traditional Korean music) further within KAIST but there were not enough study materials, so I began searching for old newspaper advertisements about the launch of phonograph albums. It made me develop an interest [in music.] I realized how important data is. You can even change existing historical facts with new data. I joined a study group of old records and finally changed my major. I majored in musicology of Korean music at the graduate school of Seoul National University and received Ph.D. in musicology from the Central Conservatory of Music in China. I was able to do it because I wanted to enjoy what I liked more so I began studying and then gathering data. How much is this kind of vintage poster worth? And which is the most pricey one in your collection?

Prices vary vastly depending on the person who sells it or purchases it. The poster of “Ben-Hur” came out in 1972 when the film was re-opened. It was much bigger than the average poster but I paid 180,000 won ($134), which is relatively cheap. When it was put up in an online auction, people didn’t bid for it that much because it was not in very good condition. I saw the poster of “Plein Soleil” which was priced at 800,000 won at an online auction but that's considered a low price now. The most valuable one in my collection is the poster of “Breathless” (1960) by Jean-Luc Godard. When the director passed away last year, scholars poured out their research and publications to pay tribute to him. One book written by 13 scholars, including a Korean professor, was one of them. In the book, different “Breathless” posters from 13 countries needed to be printed but there was no poster available for the Korean part. The Korean professor went in search of the Korean version of the film poster and found my blog posts. He contacted me through the Korea National University of Arts. So he was able to use my poster for his part in the book. I feel proud at times like this.

BY MOON SO-YOUNG [moon.soyoung@joongang.co.kr]