The narrator writes a letter to the ghost of his grandfather wondering if his recurring childhood nightmare of rusted metallic images is related to his family history. After running a scrap metal factory in Tokyo during World War II, his grandfather ended up in Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon district where small-scale run-down metal workshops still exist amidst the gentrifying city. Drawing clues from fragments of dreams and myths relating to metal, the film reveals the secret alc...more

The narrator writes a letter to the ghost of his grandfather wondering if his recurring childhood nightmare of rusted metallic images is related to his family history. After running a scrap metal factory in Tokyo during World War II, his grandfather ended up in Seoul’s Cheonggyecheon district where small-scale run-down metal workshops still exist amidst the gentrifying city. Drawing clues from fragments of dreams and myths relating to metal, the film reveals the secret alchemy of third world modernity in Cheonggyecheon where this nearly-obsolete hand labor still survives. The film attempts to reveal how we shape the metal through techniques such as sand casting and milling machines, only to find out that metals have already processed us into beings of industrialization instead.
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