Bun Bites Screening - Saving A Dragonfly

2014 is the year Hong Daye started her senior year of high school in South Korea. While her classmates were anxiously preparing for the college entrance exam, Daye decided to pick up her DV camera. What started as a casual daily “vlog” gradually grew into an 8-year-long self-narrative documentary - capturing hundreds of mock exams, the highs and lows of test results, repeated attempts, and finally the moment of entering college. Daye’s documentation is not just a personal journal. It is a raw, unfiltered portrait of an East Asian coming-of-age story, stripped of varnish or romanticisation. 

Quarrels with parents, the loss of a friend, and a lingering self-hatred all shaped the life of a Korean high school student.

‘Throughout our lives, we have been constantly reminded that we would transform into butterflies as we become adults. We were led to believe that adolescence was merely a pupal stage, where all our dreams and hopes would take flight upon metamorphosis. However, my friends and I didn’t quite experience that butterfly-like transformation. Instead, we found ourselves undergoing a different kind of growth, akin to a dragonfly that, unlike the complete metamorphosis of a butterfly, only changes in size as it matures.’

– Hong Daye