Ellie Park, Senior Photographer

Last week, award-winning Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-Ho spoke at an event hosted by the School of Art and another by the Schwarzman Center.

Bong conversed with Gregory Crewdson, a professor and the director of graduate studies in photography at the School of Art, in front of around 200 Yale and New Haven community members as part of the School of Art’s “SPOTLIGHT” series. Bong’s words were translated from Korean to English in real time by interpreter and film director Sharon Choi. 

The following day, on May 6, Yale students and the wider community had the chance to speak with Bong at a Schwartzman Session, sponsored by the Schwarzman Center.  

Describing Bong as a filmmaker who has “continually raises questions about social institutions and societal inequality,” Kymberly Pinder, the dean of School of Art, said that Bong’s films have long been “instructive.” 

“They teach you that art doesn’t have to be one thing or another, that art can be its own pain, and in such times that we are in right now, artists tell us stories we may not want to hear, but we must hear. Whether sitting in a theater or in a gallery, they will always be the truth tellers, our truth tellers, and we should listen,” said Pinder.  

Bong, best known for his films “Parasite” and “Snowpiercer,” is a celebrated South Korean director whose dark-humored and genre-bending movies address commentary on class and social issues. 

In 2019, “Parasite” became the first South Korean film to win the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. The movie would later win the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. 

“I’m so happy to be here in person to talk with you,” Bong said. “I have about 24 questions for Gregory [Crewdson] today.” He added that he had watched a documentary about Crewdson in preparation for the conversation. 

When Crewdson asked Bong about his greatest joys and annoyances about the filmmaking process, Bong said that he favors the soundtrack naming process, an aspect of production that is largely invisible to viewers. 

“That’s my favorite part, yeah, because nobody fucking cares,” Bong said. “For a whole year, your eyes are just under torture working, and then now you get to have your ears join the picture.” 

As for his least favorite part of filmmaking, Bong named the screenwriting and editing process, which is a “lonely” and “difficult” process, he said. 

Bong is known for his unique approach to filming and directing. He creates meticulously detailed storyboards for all his films. When Crewdson asked Bong about his greatest fear, he said it would be being on set without his storyboard. 

Storyboards are graphic representations of scenes; for Bong, these storyboards are akin to illustrations from comic books that he enjoyed reading when he was growing up. 

Despite Bong’s detailed vision and tight control over the scenes, he said that he tries to think about how actors “can be most free in this very meticulously set frame.” While directors are “quite strange,” he said, there’s a “mystery” to actors and their process, too.

“It feels like they have their own universes that they bring to the screen, and I don’t consider them as objects to control,” said Bong. “My process is always trying to free them from the anxiety and the obsessions that they have and try to relax as they do the performance.” 

Throughout the conversation, Bong spoke with playfulness and wit, as audience members who understood Korean laughed at the end of almost every response. The rest of the laughter followed in ripples after Choi’s translation. 

Occasionally responding with English phrases, Bong exuded a sense of comfort with audience members. When responding to their questions, he alternated between making jokes, asking follow-up questions and offering sincere advice. 

“We’d all come to hear from him, but it was clear he had questions of his own. He wanted to know how Gregory Crewdson composes an image,” Eli Osei ’26, a self-proclaimed fan of Bong who attended the Schwarzman Session, said. “When Sharon Choi, his translator, was asked a question, the director playfully translated for her instead. You’d think that someone as universally respected as him would let the praise get to his head, but he seemed just as excited as anyone to be there.”

Bong is currently working on an animation film about sea creatures, which he expects to release in 2027.