The March of Fools

Two philosophy students drift through campus life under the Yushin dictatorship: blind dates, drinking contests, long-hair crackdowns, a love that goes nowhere—and nowhere to go anyway. Ha Gil-jong trained at UCLA and co-founded Young Sang Shi Dae (The Era of the Image), the movement that pumped New Wave restlessness and American New Cinema energy into Korean commercial filmmaking. The March of Fools is where that sensibility cracks Korean cinema widest open: jagged, funny, despairing, formally alert, shot through with a self-mockery that bites harder than anger. More than 30 minutes were lost to censorship at the script and print stages, yet the film became a generational touchstone, and Song Chang-sik’s songs “Why Are You Calling” and “Whale Hunting” were banned for their association with student protest. The fools keep marching—until they can’t. Digitally mastered in 2013 under the supervision of the Korean Film Archive.