Skip to main content
Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
“When I was young and studying cinema, there was a saying that I carved deep into my heart, which is that ‘The most personal is the most creative,’” said director Bong Joon-ho in tribute to Martin Scorsese when he accepted the Oscar for Best Director. Most people focused on the second part of the quote. But Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club (now streaming on Netflix) digs into the first part and takes us behind the scenes of director Bong’s cinematic education.
YELLOW DOOR: ’90S LO-FI FILM CLUB: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: “I hope this footage helps sort out our collective Rashomon effect,” says director Bong Joon-Ho as he pulls out archival 8mm tapes. Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club documents the origin story of the Oscar-winning director in his early days ahead of his first unreleased short film Looking for Paradise. This makeshift cinema society and film school was born out of Seoul’s university club culture, and many of the participants studied social sciences rather than cinema. (Perhaps this explains why director Bong is among the few who stayed in the filmic progression.) The political upheaval of the early ‘90s provided the backdrop for engaging with their cinephilia in a newly invigorated way. From the challenges of simply accessing the films in an analog era to the joys of engaging with them through what amounts to “homework,” this documentary takes viewers from the days of early enthusiasm to the natural loss of momentum … through to the surprisingly long-lasting impact.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Yellow Door is alive with the love of its own medium in the way that other movie-related documentaries such as Spielberg, De Palma, and Filmworker (just to name a few recent historical non-fiction films) are.
Performance Worth Watching: You’ll be transported back to the 2019-2020 awards season by this documentary and get a great reminder of how fun it is to watch an ardent cinephile like Bong Joon-ho talk.
Memorable Dialogue: Lee Dong-hoon, a Yellow Door participant, poetically observes about the group’s origin that “people who were like liquid came together and had dreams like gas.”
Sex and Skin: Nothing of the sort here.
Our Take: It’s natural that Lee Hyuk-rae gravitates toward director Bong given his global prominence, of course, though the documentary does feel a little lopsided in its focus on him. Yellow Door does not spend nearly enough time fleshing out his contemporaries — at 84 minutes, it’s the rare movie that could actually stand to be a little longer. But if you enjoyed Parasite and find New Korean Cinema interesting, this documentary provides helpful context to understand and enjoy those films better. Even if there are definitely some times when the documentary takes on the feel of someone else’s class reunion (and the frequent Zoom aesthetic gives it slightly cursed COVID-era vibes), the joy they find in each other — and in cinema — is infectious.
Our Call: STREAM IT! Yellow Door: ‘90s Lo-fi Film Club is an affectionate tribute to how cinema can change people, and how people can change cinema. Even if a bit quaint and niche, those who would gravitate toward such a chronicle will find themselves entertained — and perhaps inspired to start a cinema society of their own.
Marshall Shaffer is a New York-based freelance film journalist. In addition to Decider, his work has also appeared on Slashfilm, Slant, The Playlist and many other outlets. Some day soon, everyone will realize how right he is about Spring Breakers.
