Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho
Academy museum of motion pictures
March 23, 2025 - January 10, 2027
Curated by Exhibitions Curator Michelle Puetz with the support of Assistant Curator Nicholas Barlow, Research Assistants Josue Lopez and Jeongsil Yoon, and former Getty Marrow Curatorial Intern Janice Kim.
Installation view, Director’s Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho
Photo: TBC
Director's Inspiration: Bong Joon Ho is the first exhibition dedicated to the internationally acclaimed, Oscar®–winning film director. In a continuation of the Academy Museum’s Director’s Inspiration series, this exhibition offers a focused spotlight on Bong Joon Ho’s creative process, filmography, and cinematic influences.
Whether set in 1980s Korea or an imagined future, Bong Joon Ho's films highlight transnational and universal issues: class disparities, social injustice, the environmental crisis, and political and moral corruption. His protagonists are everyday people—unlikely heroes—who confront the absurdities of modern life. From his earliest short films to his international breakthrough The Host (Republic of Korea, 2006), through the Academy Award®–winning Parasite (Republic of Korea, 2019), Bong Joon Ho's work defies simple categorization, embedding social critique into deeply funny, unexpected, and thought-provoking stories.
Equal parts cinephile and filmmaker, Bong’s belief in cinema as an international visual language can be seen in his own work, as well as in the films he admires. This exhibition explores his singular creative process through materials from his personal archive and collection, as well as the films that most inspire him. With unprecedented access to the filmmaker's archive and personal collection, the exhibition features over 100 original objects including storyboards, research materials, film posters, concept art, creature models, props, and on-set photographs.
