The latest university to implement Korean cinema in its curriculum is the University Utrecht, from the Netherlands. Korean cinema has taken an increasingly more prominent place in global academic studies related to film. Internationally, a growing number of universities included Korean cinema to their program, including renowned universities as Yale, recognising Korean cinema's position in the film world.
University Utrecht will include Korean cinema in an existing course on global cinema which is related to the International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR). Dr. Clara Pafort-Overduin explains that the decision was made after reading a thesis on Korean cinema she supervised in relation to additional Korean films she subsequently watched. The thesis analyses Korean films from a structural and Korean cultural perspective, and is required reading for the course.
It's the first time that the University Utrecht includes Korean cinema in their Film Studies' courses and it will be structural. Dr. Pafort-Overduin also says that her students showed an overwhelming interest in Korean cinema, even preferring it over Japanese and Chinese cinema, which have been long term components of the course on global cinema. She expressed the intention to create an independent course exclusively on Asian cinema in the future.
Dr. Pafort-Overduin hopes that Korean cinema will further expand the horizon of the students. She will include typical representations of Korean cinema in Europe, like Kim Ki-duk films, but also Korean films that are popular in Korea itself to show the students a different side of Korean cinema.
University Utrecht has been structurally recognised as the best university in the Netherlands by the annual 'Academic Ranking of World Universities'. This is confirmed by the Dutch magazine Elsevier, which interviews Dutch professors for its annual ranking of Dutch universities.
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