By Catherine Woo
Welcome to NYWIFT, Hyonok Kim!
Hyonok is an award-winning filmmaker and choreographer who creates innovative and experimental film. Hyonok was born in South Korea, then studied film and dance in Paris and New York. Rather than dialogue, her films use dance to express interactions, bringing the emotional experience to the viewer. She choreographed and directed 15 dance films including Weeping Water, For Sunrise, Dance with Horses, Ode on a Korean Urn, Isle of Waiting Souls, Passion & Rebirth, South Sea to Isang Yun and L’Heure de Coq. Her films were shown at international film festivals and broadcasted in France, Germany, Australia, China, Korea, the Netherlands, and the USA. Now, she lives and works in the Bronx.
Hyonok shares her inspirations in nature, as a choreographer and as a storyteller here!
NYWIFT Member Hyonok Kim
Describe yourself. Give us your elevator pitch!
I am an award-winning filmmaker and choreographer. My goal is pushing boundaries while embracing and elevating the arts. Instead of using dialogue, I create a film with a new language, depending on the union of expressive movements, music, set, atmosphere. I am concerned with conveying profound emotion, to externalize inner experiences through circumstances in a way that could stir similar responses in the viewer.
What brings you to NYWIFT?
I would like to communicate with other filmmakers and collaborate together.
What is the best and worst advice you’ve ever received?
The best advice is to listen yourself. The worst is to eliminate what was already conceived in order to write script.
What attracted you to the role as a choreographer?
It attracts me to express deep inner feeling within a theme by human body.
Hyonok Kim receiving a BRIO Award
How has your experience as a choreographer informed the way that you direct films?
Choreography means writing. It creates a language same as a film creates a language. It attracts me to use choreographic language in cinematic way in film to convey an emotion. Dance and film arts are both the art of time. In that sense, the choreography informs story to tell a story.
So many of your short films center nature and natural elements. How do you explore this theme through your choreography and direction?
I believe that nature has a spiritual power. I would like to capture the spiritual vision and bring [it] to the theatre. For me, location is important. Natural elements also become a set design which set the atmosphere desired for the film and play a role as secondary character. It also gives a challenge to movements.
What’s next for you? Are there any upcoming projects that you’re excited about?
I have an upcoming project which I plan to shoot in the Southwestern desert in America.
You can find Hyonok at her website, https://www.hyonokimdancearts.com/copy-of-b-i-o.
Catherine Woo
Catherine Woo is an intern at NYWIFT and an aspiring screenwriter. She will graduate from NYU Tisch with a BFA in Dramatic Writing in 2024. She has interned at Rattlestick Theater and Protozoa Pictures. She has done production photography for PrideFest 2023 at The Tank and Broke People Spring 2023 Play Festival at NYU.
Related Posts
Meet the New NYWIFT Member: Joyce Hills
Welcome to NYWIFT, Joyce Hills! Joyce Hills is a recent graduate of NYU Tisch, where she co-wrote and directed the culturally-rich epic Viking short film The Feather, featuring out-of-this-world SFX hair and makeup, practical stunts, and generative workflows on a virtual production volume. She was the First Assistant Director and VFX Supervisor on the Seed & Spark-awarded short film Night of Melancholia, interned in Virtual Production at Gum Studios in Brooklyn, and performed as Sugarsop, The Widow, and assorted household servants in Will Kempe’s Players’ The Taming of the Shrew. Joyce is developing her first feature film, a dark fantasy inspired by mystical quests, heroes’ journeys, and time and destiny in popular culture. She is also developing a science fiction feminist short, and is pursuing additional education in XR mediamaking and STEM. In our interview, she discussed her childhood inspirations, emerging technologies, and the future of storytelling.
READ MORENYWIFT Member Spotlight: Kelcey Edwards
NYWIFT Member Kelcey Edwards found her way into documentary filmmaking through Iron Gate Studios, a nonprofit gallery and artist workspace she cofounded in her early twenties in Austin, Texas. At the time, she was making small narrative films alongside many other Austin-based filmmakers involved in the “mumblecore” scene; her first film, Letter, screened at SXSW in 2006. Since cameras and equipment were always present in the gallery, she began interviewing many of the artists who visited the space. Over time, the habit of recording conversations and documenting artists’ lives became a steady part of her practice. That interest eventually led her to pursue an MFA in Documentary Film at Stanford and later to move to New York, where she continued developing their work. About a decade later, she directed The Art of Making It, a feature documentary about the art world, which won the Audience Award at SXSW in 2022. It’s currently available on most streaming platforms. Kelcey’s films have received support from the MacArthur Foundation, Sundance, and Tribeca Film Institute, among others, have been broadcast internationally, and have screened at top-tier festivals including SXSW, Berlinale, and Hamptons International. In our interview, Kelcey discussed her teaching philosophy, approach to filmmaking, and upcoming projects.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Therese Cayaba-Jones
Welcome, Therese Cayaba-Jones, to NYWIFT. Therese is a filmmaker with over 15 years of experience with films, documentaries, and series across the Philippines, Singapore, and the U.S. She just finished the feature screenplay for UnMarry, which was recently announced as one of the entries for the Metro Manila Film Festival 2025. Currently, Therese is producing the film Tales My Father Told, and raising money through NYWIFT fiscal sponsorship. Read on to see Therese’s story of moving to New York, her role in the 48 Hour Film Project, and her take on the state of independent filmmaking in the Big Apple.
READ MOREMeet the New NYWIFT Member: Kyle Hrabe
Welcome to NYWIFT, Kyle Hrabe! Kyle Hrabe is a Brooklyn-based creative currently writing for Scamfluencers from Wondery Podcasts. She has a background in scripted television writing, sketch comedy, and stand-up. Before moving to New York, Kyle lived in Los Angeles where she was the executive assistant for writer-director couple Angela Robinson and Alexandra Martinez Kondracke. Kyle was also a fellow for Outfest Film Festival’s emerging filmmaker program OutSet. She received her BFA in Writing for Screen and Television from USC where she showran the campus cooking show, DELISH, despite only eating a bag of chips for dinner every night.
READ MORE
Comments are closed