What would happen if four short films from and about the same city are put together in a single screening program? Like postcards sent by a friend far away, Docs Docs: Short! brings together four documentaries by directors from Ulsan, South Korea, who are part of the UMFFmentary program, to the audience of FFD 2025. The documentaries are: The Time of Yeast (Zipper, 2023), Water Celery (Yu So-young, 2022), Welcome to New World (Curtaincall and Friends, 2024), and Ulsan Vulture (SongSong, 2025). On Tuesday (11/25), the program was screened at Pascasarjana ISI Yogyakarta, followed by a discussion session with the filmmakers.
These four films are intertwined with the daily worries and closeness in the landscape and bustle of the city of Ulsan. The first film, The Time of Yeast, follows the women who make nuruk, a starter for traditional soju fermentation. The director articulates the tense yet collective moment of “waiting.” A moment when, after long and monotonous days, the women gather together again to make nuruk. The second film, Water Celery, captures the life of Lee Jung-ae, the last water celery seller on the streets of Ulsan. This film borrows the character of water celery as a metaphor for the protagonist’s perseverance in going through the seasons of life, which often give her no choice but to survive.
If the first two films focus their cameras on middle-aged female protagonists and their lives, the third film, Welcome to New World, looks at young women working in the cultural sector in Ulsan. Eun-Jeong spends her days working at a company and her nights managing an independent film screening community called Curtaincall. One day, she decides to resign and focus on managing her community. Behind the exciting moments that feel like a destination, existential anxiety begins to emerge and gnaw at Eun-Jeong, so she visits her comrades. The fourth film, Ulsan Vulture, directs the camera to the sky, to a flock of vultures that play a vital role in maintaining the ecosystem in Ulsan. Amidst the flapping wings of vultures in the cloudy skies of Ulsan, ecological issues and questions arise. Subtle and sensitive.
In all four films, the camera is placed in various functional angles to reinforce the agency of the subjects. The filmmakers summarize their perspectives. Local stories are not exotic topics, but rather experiences and life situations that need to be constantly questioned so that critical awareness is sparked towards what seems normal and established in everyday life, but is actually complex and contentious. Emancipatory everyday politics.
As a curatorial program, the Docs Docs: Short! #3 moves like a compass pointing in four directions at once. The directions offered are not destinations; they are a kind of journey and an invitation to read time, resilience, friendship, and care. In a world that promises tireless connection, these four films remind us that meaningful connection requires time, physical presence, and relentless collaboration.
Every city has its own story. These four films from Ulsan show that, despite coming from the same urban setting, there are many different perspectives from which to tell the story of life within it. The uniqueness of each story resonates across borders. When held up as a mirror to Indonesia, and indeed the world, Docs Docs: Short! #3 presents similar, though not identical, issues: fragile environments, the vulnerability of workers, and the mechanisms of negotiating the acrobatic dynamics of life in this world. (Hesty N. Tyas, 25/11/2025 [Ed/Trans. Vanis])
