Twenty Questions
Minouk Lim
13 min 16 sec. 2007
Intertitles and Subtitles in English
Intertitles
Now in its fourth year, the Migrants Arirang Festival—translated from Damunhwa Chukjae (Multicultural Festival) in Korean—was previously called the Foreign Workers Festival and the Migrant Workers Festival in the Korean language until it was recently renamed the Multicultural Festival in 2007. The evolution of the Korean title reflects a shift away from the traditional perception of Korea as homogenous society. More importantly, it also reflects the Korean people’s dilemma over what to call a group of people who have become their own neighbors and family members. The issue of “naming” often manifests itself as distinctive violence in our day-to-day life, leaving behind a great deal of pain while foreclosing the possibility for communication and imagination.
Inspired while designing the “World Market Bazaar” tent for the Migrants Arirang Festival, this video is a documentary that attempts to find a name for the people with whom we are “together yet apart” residing beyond the other side of the lens.
Subtitles
The sound of a monsoon goblin crossing a shallow stream[*]
: Game of Twenty Questions
* A Korean saying that points to a situation in which a person holds resentment against someone else, but can only express the feeling through mumbling thus is incomprehensible.
I move downward from a high place.
I also move upward from a low place.
Q: Who might I be?
1.Blood 2. Mixed blood 3. Hybrid 4. Mongrel 5. None of the above
I’ve always lived here.
I wander about here and there.
I have no roots. But you can’t put down roots without me.
Q: Who might I be?
1. Belly 2. Mother 3. Bitch 4. House 5. None of the above
I am warm yet also cold.
If you confine me I will push you away, I will hide if I am scared.
There is no place I cannot enter.
Once I swell up, I fall and flow and then disappear once more.
1. Mind 2. Heart 3. Wind 4. Thief 5. None of the above
I am spontaneous and can clash or mix well.
Many say they have seen me, many also say “long time no see”.
I don’t choose and I don’t hesitate.
If I spread, it can sometimes hurt.
1.Bubbles 2.Ghost 3.Clouds 4.Ice Cream 5.None of the above
Once I get into someone’s head, I stay there.
Sometimes I will exit through the eyes and other times through the mouth.
I’m most tired when hanging from a national flag.
I flow in one’s blood.
1.Country 2.Ruler 3.Police 4.Animal 5.None of the above
The harder someone hits me, the more joyous I resonate.
I sometimes gnaw slowly or sometimes gulp down.
I often drop one off and disappear.
I have nothing to protect and nothing for others to take.
Most don’t even know something’s there.
1. Smell 2. Closet 3. Words 4. Car 5. None of the above
I have no hometown.
I have no dreams and I never stop.
I keep coming back and I keep on leaving.
1. Windmill 2. Mutt 3. Notebook 4. Carpet 5. None of the above
I cannot be bought or sold.
I am all sorts of colors and shapes and like to move in groups of three or four.
I have no ending or beginning.
I am all different but also all the same.
Q: Who might I be?
1. Brass coin 2. Uniform 3.Rainbow 4.Finger 5.None of the above
A monsoon goblin.
Was about to cross the shallow stream but dropped by the moon first.
The moon, which takes away, picks up, leaves, and sees off is a busy terminal.
Is that why the moon
Doesn’t rise but shakes?
Q: Where might I be?
1. Korea 2. Olympos 3. North Pole 4. Apartment 5. None of the above
Geum-jong Jee, The 4th Migrants Arirang Executive Director
"A festival requires breaking away – in other words it needs a mechanism of breaking away from reality into a realm of the unreal. People know surprisingly very little about others."
I have seen you before.
I am you.
Q: Who might you be?
1.Michel 2.Luna 3.Jaehyun 4.Paprika 5.None of the above
