Sharjah Art Foundation

Sharjah Biennial 16

Sharjah, United Arab Emirates
6 Febuary — 15 June 2025

Factory Complex, 2014

Heung-Soon Im
Factory Complex, 2014
Colour, Korean (Arabic and English subtitles)
1h 48 min
Film still

Synopsis

There’s no doubt that the economic development in South Korea once surprised the rest of the world. However, behind of it was an oppression the marginalized female laborers had to endure. Factory Complex invites us to the lives of the working class women engaged in the textile industry of the 1960s, all the way through the stories of flight attendants, cashiers, and non-regular workers of today. The form of labor seems to change its appearance but the essence of a bread-and-butter question remains still. The film ends up in Cambodia, where we encounter the repetition of the history of labor that took place in Korea.