Educational Media Reviews Online

With Crossings, Director Deann Borshay Liem of the Berkeley, California based company, MU Film, offers a solid contribution to other documentary films that firm has produced exploring Korea and women peacemakers. True to MU’s stated mission of helping to bring to light untold stories from underrepresented communities, Crossings is a well-focused case study of a feminist social movement seeking peace in the context of the long history of divided North and South Koreas. Employing a travelogue style, the film follows an international group of thirty women peace activists as they organize 2015’s international visitation and cross border act of migration, called Women Cross DMZ. The group is led by Korean-American Christine Ahn, and includes Gloria Steinem, Medea Benjamin and many others. Through travel in the air, on buses, and on foot, we journey with them as they partner with other women peace and reunification activists from both north and south. They confront accommodations as well as obstacles from governments and the populations on all sides of a war in Asia that has had seven decades of cease fire but no formal peace agreement.

Students of social movements and the history of Korean peoples, as well as those organizing peace campaigns, will benefit from some of the detailed coverage observable within Crossings. These women navigate interactions with conservative governments, military forces, and a multitude of press and news reporting looking to spin out tales sometimes distorting their goals. They encounter harrowing testimonies from survivors of the war – some of those witnesses being child victims and address the numerous ethical and moral challenges wherein the activists battle against being used as pawns by any side in a deeply rooted, multi-decade international conflict.

One of the strongest elements of Crossings is the opportunity it affords for experiencing different perspectives and even disagreements about activism, as this spans a multicultural and multigenerational array of women with committed backgrounds working toward peaceful social change inside numerous countries around the globe. The treatment here helps the viewer see both the expertise that is possessed by these accomplished activists (Steinem’s deep well of experience is central and undeniable), and nuances in each individual’s point of view and tactical inclinations. This humanizes the activists, which complexity sometimes easily gets lost within more superficial modes of news reporting or popular culture portrayals. The film itself quite skillfully depicts how journalistic outlets all too readily seem poised to manipulate the intentions of these women, or goals of any activist.

One appreciates refreshing directorial choices made by Liem where, in their own voices, it is plain that none of these often quite well-known women leaders are caricatures. Neither north nor south nor the United States are let off the hook in various representations of threats to peace, whether that be Kim Jong Un’s nuclear missile tests, America’s basic prosecution of the war against the north in the 1950s, or President Donald Trump’s inability at a 2019 summit meeting in Hanoi to exchange a phased denuclearization in the north for a genuine peace treaty. The journey traverses perils inherent in the south’s enforcements of 1948’s National Security Act, which present activists like Ahn with sharp risks of deportation and other potential penalties.

There are no pat dichotomies sketched out as the women journey across an otherwise sealed border that divides governments, families, and cultures. The activists on the journey are candid about the strengths and weaknesses observed on all sides. Nobel Peace Prize recipient from Liberia, Leymah Gbowee, is a particular standout as she strikes an important note amidst conflicting political ideologies, raising central moral questions on the very nature of freedom itself, as applies to how any nation works toward having its population prosper, stay educated or remain healthy. Crossings is an apt juxtaposition of common tensions as nations balance considerations of freedom with attention to safety, security, and human rights. The journey these women experience within the film brings connections and compromises. Not every ideal goal for their movement on this high-profile trip unfolds as planned.

Reservations regarding Crossings are minor. Covering so many accomplished women as they remain unified in their goal of crossing the border between north and south is not easily encapsulated. Recognition of the leadership role occupied by Christine Ahn is true in its chronicle of her organizing skill, but some editing choices may weaken what we see and hear from the dozens of other strong women underpinning this activism and the largely successful cross border action known as 2015’s Women Cross DMZ. Some of the women activists on the journey are heard from a bit too infrequently. Launching the film with what seems like an academic conference milieu is a legitimate documentation of events that led up to the women visiting both Koreas, and an early act of solidarity. But as a visual experience, this is somewhat less inspiring, when the heart of the film revolves around the struggle of the women to engage and travel across unfamiliar borders where that is generally seen as highly transgressive. How these activists negotiate all of that outside of meeting rooms is the heart of this film.

The concluding sequences, especially portrayals of developments since 2018 are informative, but feel slightly tacked on. Those possibly could have been reduced, or otherwise more briefly summarized, in favor of additional time allocated squarely toward the one-on-one and group voices heard during this border crossing, more time still seeing and hearing activists, protestors, and community members on both sides of the Korean DMZ. With these small concerns noted, Crossings is otherwise recommended for those exploring women led peace movements, Korean history, or case examples of thoughtful acts of public diplomacy that intersect with the vicissitudes of twenty-first century global news coverage.

Awards:
Jason D Mak Award for Social Justice-DisOrient Asian American Film Festival of Oregon; Grand Jury Nominee-Seattle Asian American Film Festival 2023; Official Selection-45th Asian American Film Festival New York 2022; Official Selection at-Hawaii International Film Festival 2021, San Diego Asian American Film Festival 2022, and the 2023 CAAMFest

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