Motherland Cuba Korea USA Cuba Korea USA

Motherland

Cuba Korea USA

A film by Dai Sil Kim-Gibson

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SYNOPSIS

How do we decide where is home? Feeling increasingly isolated in her adopted homeland, accomplished documentarian Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (SILENCE BROKEN: KOREAN COMFORT WOMEN) travels to Cuba to unearth stories from a relatively unknown group in the Asian diaspora. On the island, she meets Martha, a woman of Korean descent who identifies herself as Cuban. Like many of her contemporary countrymen and women, Martha possesses family ties that span multiple nations, cultures and politics. Her story inspires Kim-Gibson to travel to Miami to meet Martha's émigré sister and the rest of their mulitcultural family, in a journey that reveals how very different worldviews can co-exist in one family separated by place and ideology.

Asking probing questions about identity and economic and social justice, Kim-Gibson explores the ways in which we determine our ethnic, national, and cultural loyalties. The compelling stories in Motherland Cuba Korea USA weave a complex web and illuminate the search for an understanding of "motherland" in a globalized society.

PRESS

“[R]ecommended, especially for ethnic studies collections.” EMRO

Educational Media Reviews Online Brian Falato

“With high production values and clear and correct subtitles, Kim-Gibson’s film brings… divergent ideologies front and center for interested viewers.”

Library Journal

“If anyone can give a new twist…[on] the ubiquitous topic of identity in an original way…it's this veteran.”

Catherine Manabat Asia Pacific Arts

“Riveting…a fascinating exploration of identity and motherland told through the lens of modern Cuban and Korean histories.”

Lynne Connor San Francisco Int’l Asian American Film Festival

“Inspiring...Convinces me that solidarity…among immigrants…could create a new meaning for this world and make it a more peaceful home for all of us.”

Mingwei Song Asst. Prof. of East Asian Languages and Literatures, Wellesley College

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Pusan Int’l Film Festival, South Korea
San Francisco Int’l Asian-American Film Festival
Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival
Asian American Int’l Film Festival, New York
Tulipanes Latino Art and Film Festival, MI

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Dai Sil Kim-Gibson

Dai Sil Kim-Gibson is an independent filmmaker/writer, known for championing the compelling but neglected issues of human rights. All of her films garnered many awards, including the Kodak Filmmaker Award, and were screened at numerous festivals worldwide, in addition to national broadcast on PBS and on the Sundance Channel in the United States. She has received grants from the Rockefeller and MacArthur Foundations. Formerly professor of religion at Mount Holyoke College with a Ph.D in religion from Boston University, and an author of many articles, "Silence Broken: Korean Comfort Women" is her first book (The Philadelphia Inquirer, "unforgettable") and her second book is "Looking for Don: A Meditation." She has also complied and edited a memoir by her late husband, Donald D. Gibson, "Iowa Sky." Her own memoir, "Korean Sky" is now available at Amazon.com. (3/16)

Subject Areas

Asia Asian American Caribbean Family Relations Immigration and Exile Latina

Havana Divas

Offering a window into the experience of Chinese migration to Cuba, HAVANA DIVAS follows two Cantonese opera singers who perform for decades in Cuba before, and during, Fidel Castro’s revolution.

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People Are the Sky

Director Dai Sil Kim-Gibson (MOTHERLAND CUBA KOREA USA) is the first Korean American filmmaker to be given official permission by the North Korean government to film inside its borders. In PEOPLE ARE THE SKY, Kim-Gibson’s eighth and most personal film, the filmmaker makes a pilgrimage to her place of birth in North Korea for the first time in nearly 70 years, to explore if it is still home. Kim-Gibson seamlessly weaves her own personal story as a native born North Korean, with the fractious history of the North/South division and pinpoints the roots of North Korean’s hatred of the United States, giving Americans a much better understanding of the conflict. A mix of interviews epic images and graceful musings, PEOPLE ARE THE SKY offers some of the best political and social history of the relations between North and South Korea, and also a contemplative exploration of the meaning of home. The result is unprecedented, at times startling, for hers is an up close look of the hurts and desires, beauty and contradiction, pride and aspirations of the long held demonized nation.

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Home is Struggle

Using interviews, photographs and theatrical vignettes, Home is Struggle explores the lives of women who have come to the United States from different Latin American countries-Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina and the Dominican Republic-for very different reasons, economic and political. In sharing stories about their pasts and present and their views on issues such as sexism and personal and political repression, Home is Struggle presents an absorbing picture of the construction of 'Latina' identity and the immigrant experience.

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Maestra and Maestras Voluntarias

MAESTRA (2012) MAESTRAS VOLUNTARIAS (2022) Two films tell the courageous history of the first Volunteer Teachers in Cuba and the women who laid the groundwork for a massive National Literacy Campaign that would teach more than 707,000 Cubans how to read and write. 

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Knowing Her Place

A moving investigation of the cultural schizophrenia experienced by Vasu, an Indian woman who has spent most of her life in the U.S. Vasu's relationships with her mother and grandmother in India and her husband and teenage sons in New York, reveal profound conflicts between her traditional upbringing and her personal and professional aspirations. The film fuses photographs, vérité sequences and experimental techniques to probe the multilayered experience of immigrant women with rare candor and emotional resonance. Useful for courses on immigration, sex roles and the study of documentary form.

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Adio Kerida (Goodbye Dear Love)

Distinguished Anthropologist Ruth Behar (recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship) returns to her native Cuba to profile the island’s remaining Sephardic Jews and chronicle her family’s journey to the U.S. as Cuban-Jewish exiles. Highlighting themes of expulsion and departure that are at the crux of the Sephardic legacy, Behar seeks reconciliation with Cubans on the island and advocates for the possibility of return and renewal. She debunks myths about the country’s Jewish community and unravels the influence of interfaith marriage, Afro-Cuban santería, tourism and the embargo on contemporary Cuban-Sephardic cultural identity. The result is a bittersweet, lyrical, and often humorous portrait of modern-day Cuba that few know exists today. Narrated by Elizabeth Peña.

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OUR CATALOG

Motherland

Cuba Korea USA

SYNOPSIS

PRESS

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Subject Areas

RELATED LINKS

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN

Havana Divas

People Are the Sky

Home is Struggle

Maestra and Maestras Voluntarias

Knowing Her Place

Adio Kerida (Goodbye Dear Love)