Cinematic Border Crossings: Zhang Lu, Dooman River, and Diasporic Filmmaking

The University of Chicago Center in Beijing

20th floor, Culture Plaza
No. 59A Zhong Guan Cun Street
Haidian District Beijing 100872

So Hye Kim is Lecturer in the Korean Studies Programme at the University of Hong Kong. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago and previously taught at Northwestern University and Korea University. Her research and teaching focus on Korean cinema, contemporary Korean culture, and diasporic and transnational East Asian cinema. Her work examines how migration, diaspora, and transnational encounters reshape Korean cinema and national culture. She is currently working on her first monograph, Beyond Longing and Belonging: The Cinematic Interplay

Zhang Lu (b. 1962), a Korean Chinese (Chaoxianzu) director, is one of the most distinctive diasporic filmmakers working across China and South Korea in recent decades. His career can be broadly divided into three phases, marked by shifts in location, language, and the national film cultures in which his works are situated. Zhang began by portraying ethnic Koreans across China, Korea, and Mongolia, often focusing on people pushed toward the social and geographical borders of nation-states. From 2012 to 2019, he predominantly made films in South Korea, where he had relocated from China. Since 2021, he has returned to Chinese-language filmmaking based primarily in China, marking another shift across national and cinematic contexts.

Made in 2009 in Zhang’s hometown in Northeast China, Dooman River occupies a significant position within this trajectory. Located along the China–North Korea border, the film brings together several central concerns in Zhang Lu’s cinema: migration, ethnic and national boundaries, and the precarious movement of people across borders. At the same time, border-crossing extends beyond physical movement between nation-states. Through its cinematic form, the film explores how the experience of crossing borders can also be embodied and experienced by the spectator.

This talk examines border-crossing in Zhang Lu’s cinema across several dimensions: territorial borders between nation-states, ethnic, linguistic, and cultural boundaries, and cinematic borders that can be crossed or unsettled through film form and spectatorial experience. I argue that Zhang’s career demonstrates how diasporic filmmaking is shaped through an ongoing engagement with national film cultures rather than existing outside them. His films therefore offer an illuminating case for thinking about how national cinema, diasporic filmmaking, and cinematic experience are constituted through practices of border-crossing.

Monday October 26, 2026

4:00PM         Registration

4:30PM         Welcome and Introduction by Paola Iovene (Faculty Director, UChicago Beijing Center)

4:35PM         Short intro to the film by So Hye Kim

4:45-6:20PM     Screening of Dooman River (dir Zhang Lu, 2010, 93 min)

Reception

7PM-7:35PM     "Cinematic Border Crossings: Zhang Lu, Dooman River, and Diasporic Filmmaking," a lecture by Sohye Kim (The University of Hong Kong) 

7:35-8:15PM     Q&A (on both lecture and film)