Small pastel houses stack in tight rows up a steep hillside, linked by stepped alleys and open staircases.
What Gamcheon Culture Village looks like
Small houses climb the slope in tight rows, two and three storeys of painted concrete and stucco. The walls are blue, pink, mint and yellow. Blue sheet metal covers most of the roofs, flat or barely pitched, with black plastic water tanks and ceramic jars along the edges.
Stepped alleys and open staircases link the houses instead of a road, narrow enough that two people have to turn sideways to pass each other. A flight of 148 steps climbs one side of the hill. , the paved street at the base of the village, is the only road wide enough for a car.
Laundry lines, air conditioning units and a tangle of utility wires cross the gaps between buildings. Window grilles and small shuttered doorways open directly onto the stairs. A few of the lower houses have been converted into cafes, with folding signs and potted plants set out on the steps outside.
From the upper paths the roofs run down toward the harbour, a strip of water and cranes visible past the last row of houses. A dark, forested hill rises directly behind the village, its tree line cutting the painted rooftops off from the sky.
Shot in Gamcheon Culture Village
The 2019 film A Little Princess used the hillside village and neighbouring Nambumin-dong as the setting for a grandmother raising her two granddaughters. The 2006 crime film Bloody Tie places the home of Lee Taek-jo, the uncle of its lead character, inside Gamcheon Culture Village.
A Little Princess, 2019
A Little Princess is a 2019 film about a grandmother raising her two granddaughters. It used Gamcheon Culture Village and neighbouring Nambumin-dong as the family's shantytown home. The source names the village itself rather than one address, so this is the housing the film shows rather than a single pinned building.
Bloody Tie, 2006
Bloody Tie is a 2006 crime film starring Hwang Jung-min and Ryoo Seung-bum. It places the home of Lee Taek-jo, the uncle of its lead character, inside Gamcheon Culture Village. The source does not give a street number, so this corner house on a stepped alley stands for the kind of home the film describes rather than the exact building.
Cerro Concepción and the neighbouring Cerro Alegre climb a steep hillside in brightly painted houses linked by narrow stairways and funicular cars, the closest match anywhere for a hillside stacked in colour. Both neighbourhoods were built up informally before the paint arrived, and narrow streets twist between the houses much the way Gamcheon's own alleys do. The houses here are corrugated metal rather than Gamcheon's painted concrete and stucco, so a close shot shows ribbed sheet siding instead of a rendered wall. The funicular cars and ironwork balconies also look distinctly Chilean in a wide shot. Try searching painted hillside stairway houses now.
Favela Santa Marta in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Favela Santa Marta is the same kind of steep hillside stacked with small concrete houses and threaded by narrow stairs. Part of the favela was painted in bright greens, yellows and pinks under a 2010 community project, much like Gamcheon's own 2009 scheme. The dense, informal construction under the paint is close to Gamcheon's own. Only about 34 houses were painted, roughly 7,000 square metres of Santa Marta's much larger hillside. A wide shot needs careful framing to keep the unpainted houses out of view, since Gamcheon's own colour runs almost continuously across the slope. Santa Marta also sits closer to the city below, with high rises visible in wider shots that Gamcheon's own backdrop does not carry. Try searching painted hillside favela stairs now.
Bo-Kaap covers the lower slope of Signal Hill in flat roofed houses painted in bold blocks of colour, close to Gamcheon's own palette in a wide or aerial shot. The streets here are cobbled rather than stepped, so the comparison works best from a distance rather than at ground level. The houses are attached, single storey Cape Dutch terraces rather than Gamcheon's freestanding stacked boxes, which shows in anything closer than a wide shot. Cobbled paving and flat rooflines also give the location away in a street level frame. Try searching painted flat roofed terraces now.
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