Into the Night

American Alley traces the lives of Korean and immigrant women who provide sexual services to U.S. military personnel stationed near the camptown area called “American Alley” in South Korea. The film depicts the changing landscape of camptown life and sexualized labor as women from Russia and the Philippines replace Korean women as entertainers in GI clubs. The documentary skillfully situates these changes in the context of U.S.–South Korean relations and new gender and racial politics in South Korea. (via cinema.indiana.edu)

There remains only silence in a US military camp town and the, soon to be demolished, surrounding entertainment district in the northern part of Kyounggi province. In the town, three ex-prostitutes live with pains engraved in their minds and bodies. This film poignantly shows pieces of their memories and their figures wandering through the forgotten site, and reveals the most pathetic truth left behind.

Founded 40 years ago amid pressure to open Korea's film market to Hollywood, the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA) became South Korea's first national film school. Without interviews or intervention, the film observes the school today. Moving through rigorous critique sessions, lengthy faculty review meetings, administrative meetings, and a fraught roundtable between the school and its animation alumni, it traces the conditions through which creative work takes shape.

The movie, which seemed likely to be a video study by a local researcher on comfort women in the military camp town, is becoming an increasingly fictional world, including visits by the dead, resulting in historical, fantastic and allegorical results.

Short Film​ Documentaries​ in Korea From the festival What The DOC 2025