|
Featured Events
|
|
Written by Samuel Jamier
|
|
Wednesday, 15 August 2007 |
|
The New York Korean Film Festival is having its second Short Film program on August 30th at Cinema Village. The theme of this year’s edition is: Universality. The purpose is “to honor the works, which communicate and connect with various culture and audience by sharing something that is core in life.”
“In Your Eyes”, one of the animation finalist
After the programming committee’s initial choices, the NYKFF team has invited guest jurors to select their best picks from a list of finalists. Here are the New York Korean Film Festival 2007 Short Film program official selections:
“An Artistic Presentation of Metaphysical Butterfly Effect” by Ki-wan Park
“Beef Palace” by Michael Kim
“Blackout” by June Lee
“Cold Air” by Mi-na Jhung
“Dalsoo and Soojin’s Story” by Seo Lee
“In Your Eyes” by Eun-mi Lee
“Family Picnic” by Seung-wan Hong
“J, a Photographer in a Strange Village” by Sang-yup Lee
“The Love of a Boy Who Loved Orange” by Geon-hwa Hong
“Red” by Jaihong Juhn
“Reunion” by Sung-hoon Hong
“Stutter” by Janice Ann
“This Solace Eternal” by Jennie Na
“Under the Honey Chestnut Tree” by Hyun-min Lee
“Show Me Daddy’s Ultra Power” by Min-seok Choi
Live-Action Finalists
“Stutter” by Janice Ahn
“Beef Palace” by Michael Kim
“J, a Photographer in a Strange Village” by Sang-yup Lee
“Blackout” by June Lee
Animation Finalists
“In Your Eyes” by Eun-mi Lee
“Under the Honey Chestnut Tree” by Hyun-min Lee
“An Artistic Presentation of Metaphysical Butterfly Effect” by Ki-wan Park
A group of industry-working jurors was invited to judge the short films this year.
The event is also meant to provides networking opportunities between emerging directors and the film industry. Jurors are as follows:
Jef Castro
Co-director and Creator/Curator for Music Video Program at
New York Asian American International Film Festival
Peter Goldwyn
Vice President Acquisitions of Samuel Goldwyn Films
David Koh
Head of Acquisitions and Production, Arthouse Films
John H Lee + Jiae Kim
Creative director + Publisher of THEME Magazine
Richard Lim
Producer and a founding partner of Sidetrack Films
Bill Woods
Programmer for New Filmmakers Series at Anthology Film Archives *
The winners for live action and animation categories will be announced after the completion of the NYKFF short film festival screenings.
An after-screening party will follow from 9:30 PM at Forum, 127 Fourth Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets.
|
|
|
Reviews
|
|
Written by Samuel Jamier
|
|
Saturday, 11 August 2007 |
|
Unstoppable Marriage is director Kim Sung-Wook’s first movie and a good piece of romantic and unpretentious fun (more fun than my review, if I may say so myself). Kim has obviously taken some inspiration from his previous work on hit comedies like the excellent Attack the Gas Station by Kim Sang-Jin, Lovely Rivals, and My Teacher, Mr. Kim, by Jang Gyoo-Seong, who made Small-Town Rivals this year, and to whom he was an assistant for a long time.
The main attraction of this charming tale of opposites attract is the pair of glamorous star-crossed lovers that graces the big screen for about two hours: the unfeasibly cute (I’m sure I’ve written this before) ex-S.E.S. member and top-celeb’ singer-turned-actress Eugene (in a more orthodox transliteration: Yoo-Jin), and rising star/heartthrob Ha Suk-Jin from Hot For Teacher, See You After School, and the recent hit drama Hello! Miss.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Essays
|
|
Written by Samuel Jamier
|
|
Thursday, 09 August 2007 |
|
The New York Korean Film Festival 2007, presented by Helio and organized by The Korea Society:
Tazza: the High Rollers will be screened on
- Saturday, August 25th 2007, 9:00 PM. At Cinema Village
- Sunday, September 2nd 2007, 6:00 PM. At BAM Rose Cinemas
By some odd coincidence, as I was looking for the Japanese title of Tazza for some work I had to do in the prospect of the upcoming festival, I came across a charmingly quaint term: ikasamashi (written in the original below... it is the title of a book by Yanagihara Kei, apparently).
A cheater, a con man… a dirty… rotten scoundrel? Mad or bad… dangerous to know at any rate, as they say. A word that also happens to refer to a masterpiece of 17th century painting by George De La Tour: The Cheat with the Ace of Diamonds (which can be seen at the Louvre) and its avatar, The Cheat with the Ace of Clubs (acquired by the Kimbell Art Museum), the kind of vocabulary that Machida Ko (ex-punk rocker and Akutagawa-prize winner novelist) would not shrink from using.This might not seem immediately relevant (what’s relevant in a blog anyway?) but as odd as it might sound, there is something seductive about the idea of tracing a sort of unwitting lineage from classical painting to contemporary South Korean cinema in general and Tazza (which I commented earlier on, this year) in particular. The ghostly connection between the two (in so many ways, between high art and “pop” art) offers the occasion of a brief deviant commentary of Choi Dong-Hoon’s film.
In the realm of artistic representation, the card game card is hardly a novelty. Cinema has certainly exploited the theme threadbare, from the God of Gamblers series in Hong Kong (from Chow Yun-Fat to Gong Li) to the cockney hoodlums of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, from Paul Newman to Tom Cruise (!), from Rounders to Tazza, half a world away.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Reviews
|
|
Written by Samuel Jamier
|
|
Monday, 06 August 2007 |
|
The New York Korean Film Festival 2007, presented by Helio and organized by The Korea Society:
The Old Garden will be screened on
- Sunday, August 26th 2007, 9:00 PM. At Cinema Village
- Sunday, September 2nd 2007, 3:00 PM. At BAM Rose Cinemas
The Old Garden is an MBC production. (International sales: Cineclick Asia, Seoul.) Produced by Park Jong, Kim Jung-ho. Executive producer, Park Hyun-tae. Co-executive producers, Kim Kwang-seob, Lee Duk-hoon, Kim Sung-kyun, Jhe Min-ho. Directed, written by Im Sang-soo, based on a novel by Hwang Sok-Yong.
History continues because we live.
Kong Sonok, Parched Season
This is the picture of a young happy couple, yes, but also an image of unbearable irony. Behind the glamorous beauty of the couple, played by Yeom Jung-Ah (an ex-miss Korea) and Ji Jin-Hee (not too shabby himself), lies the ugly legacy of a long era of military dictatorship and one of the darkest chapters of South Korea’s recent history.
The commercial success of the soberly entitled May 18th, by Kim Ji-Hoon, this summer (the CJ Entertainment film took the top spot at the box office with 1.45 million viewers, taking in US$ 10.1 million in its first weekend) shows the enduring impact of the event on the country’s collective memory, and its lasting, symbolic and emotional importance.
On May 18th 1980 and during the very long days that followed (the event is often referred to in Korean by the date on which it began, 5. 18, or o-il- pal), the unspeakable happened in Gwangju, a city located in South Cholla, a southwestern province that has always been considered a proverbial den of dissent and discontent and (cause or consequence?) the secular object of discrimination.
Originally a mere student demonstration against the closing of Chonnam National University, the protests that took place on that day were met with extreme violence. The brutality of the paratroops mobilized to crush the movement was such that the local population formed a “citizen army” that was able to stand up to the professional soldiers for a short while. But this victory could only last for so long and after a few days of an uncertain peace, the enraged military indulged in a proper carnage and quelled any kind of resistance for good. During those tragic days, military repression claimed a heavy toll on the civilian population, resulting in as many as 200 victims and a 1000 injured according to official figures. Estimates today range from 500 to 2,000.
The uprising, a turning point in the painful path to democracy, is at the center of the best-selling literary masterpiece by Hwang Sok-Yong, The Old Garden, which provided Im Sang-Soo with his source material for his fifth feature film, a first for a director who has always worked with original scripts. Hwang Sok-Yong was one of the first writers to mention the subject-matter openly, in a collection of documents and testimonies entitled Beyond Death, Beyond the Darkness of the Times, published in 1985 and banned until 1987. In The Old Garden, published in 2000, his ambition was much greater. He did not only content himself with the depiction of the Gwangju uprising (sometimes referred to as the “Spring of Seoul”, in reference to the events of Prague), he inscribed it in the greater context of South Korea’s contemporary history, immersing the reader in its tumultuous flow and in the personal lives that were taken away with the tide of events.
Im Sang-Soo’s reverential adaptation of the novel keeps the fragile balance between the political and the personal that could be found in the book, and turns out to be, arguably, one of the most original (and quite oblique one as well) cinematic treatment of the national tragedy, represented on screen before by Jang Sun-Woo in 1996 with A Petal and Lee Chang-Dong, with Peppermint Candy in 2000. Im Sang-Soo, who confirms here his status as a political filmmaker, in the highest sense of the word. picks up the contemporary history of South Korea at the precise moment when his previous film, The President's Last Bang (his best work to date), left it: after the murder of President Park Chung-Hee, on October 26th 1979. The peninsula has fallen under the heel of General Chun Doo-Hwan, who lead the Coup d’état of December Twelfth (1979) and left a gaping wound in the history of Korea in the form of the Gwangju massacre.
|
|
Read more...
|
|
|
