Renowned Bangladeshi film researcher and filmmaker Dr Zakir Hossain Raju joined the Global Korean Cinema conference, commemorating 100 years of Korean Cinema, in Seoul from October 25 to 27. He was invited as the only speaker from South Asia in this conference.
The first screening of the earliest Korean film Fight for Justice took place on October 27, 1919. This year the Korean Film Council and Committee for Korean Film 100 Years are celebrating the first century of Korean cinema in South Korea.
The conference brought together film professors from North America, Europe, and East Asia to look through the first century and the future of Korean cinema in the global media atmosphere. Dr Raju joined the panel on Global Korean Cinema with the National, the Transnational and the inter-Asian, along with the film scholars An Jisoon from the University of California Berkeley (USA), Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto from Waseda University (Japan), and Sangjoon Lee from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). He presented on ‘Korean Cinema teaching in a South Asian Classroom’.
Professor Dr Zakir Hossain Raju, a well-known expert of Asian cinema, developed the unique course titled KRN 112: Korean Cinema and Society at the Independent University Bangladesh (IUB) back in 2015. This course is one of its kind in South Asia.
This undergraduate course examines South Korean society, culture, and modernity in relation to its cinema and popular culture. Students interested in cinema, visual arts, theatre, music, anthropology, cultural studies, comparative literature and global studies usually take this as their foundation course.
He taught Korean cinema to over 300 students since 2015, and KRN 112 is considered to be one of the most popular foundation courses at IUB.
