To Whom It May Concern It is very honor to recommend Gye-joong Kim for applying PhD program of Cinema Studies in York University. I met Gye-joong Kim first time as a collaborator when I founded EXiS (Experimental Film & Video Festival in Seoul) who continued contributing to on-going success of EXiS, the exquisite and sole avant-garde film festival in Asia. As I observed him closely during last 7 years, the time we were making enormous effort to build the foundation of artistic filmmaking scene in Korea, I have realized that he has superior ability to achieve to bring opportunities visible, which have hardly been attempted previously due to many obstacles. His challenge to explore relatively unfamiliar territory of cinema residing in between gallery art and film industry, has been quite distinguished so far. He was able to gather artists and festival & media art center organizers into one market for their presentation and distribution of their film and video works. He provided them the chance to be aware of the importance of sharing the common area of creation. His job was also to understand and analyze specificity of Korean emerging community and activity in social and cultural context. He acutely found out which point he should aim at in order to keep criticality and at the same time continue being modified for rapidly chaining map of media art regarded on cinematic language and production. Based upon my close observation on his active achievement within short time since his return to South Korea from the study in US, I truly believe he would be proper candidate for the PhD program of Cinema & Media Studies in York University. Therefore I without any hesitation recommend him as potential student at your program at York University.
Sincerely
Donghyun Park Director of EXiS (Experimental Film and Video Festival in Seoul) & Professor of Division of Film & Musical Science Campus: San 38-2 Nam-dong, Cheoin-gu, Yongin-si, Kyunggi-do, Korea (449-728) Tel 82.31.330.6213, Fax 82.31.330.6212, H.P 82.10.8719.7075 E-mail: director@ex-is.org