If Hollywood floats above the political and economic struggles unfolding around it, providing a dreamy, celluloid escape from social turmoil, then Korean cinema is frequently the opposite: passionately engaged with reality. Through a century of Japanese colonization, devastating war, dictatorship, rapid-fire industrialization and political upheaval, Korean filmmakers have chronicled the turbulent history of their nation in painstaking detail.
These films represent the best of that tradition. More than simply portraying the tumultuous events that wracked Korea in the twentieth century, they parse the various, deeply personal, meanings that the country’s recent past have had for those who have lived through it and imagine the lingering, unpredictable consequences of such events on the ever-fleeting present.
Thursday, May 15, 2008 at 6:30PM
The Ball Shot By A Midget 난장이가 쏘아올린 공
1981, 100 minutes
Director: Lee Won-se
Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Jeon Yang-ja, Keum Bo-ra
“Violence is not just bullets, nightsticks and fists,” says one character in Lee Won-se's screen adaptation of Jo Se-hee's best-selling novel. Living a hand-to-mouth existence in the ironically named neighborhood of Haengbok-dong (happy street), Kim Bul-yi's family struggles with social acceptance, poverty and lost dreams. The film's exploration of one family's struggle to earn their daily bread illustrates Leo Tolstoy's immortal observation that "happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
Click here to buy tickets.
Movies will be screened at The Korea Society in midtown Manhattan (950 Third Avenue, 8th Floor.)
Spring in My Hometown 아름다운 시절
1998, 121 minutes
Director: Lee Kwang-mo
Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Yu Oh-sung and Song Eun-suk
Lee Kwang-mo’s
Spring in My Hometown takes a contemplative a contemplative examination of life in a remote village as its inhabitants deal with the tumult brought on by the Korea War.
Thursday, February 21, 2008 at 6:30PM
To The Starry Island 그 섬에 가고싶다
1993, 101 minutes
Director: Park Kwang-soo
Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Moon Seong-keun and Shim Hye-jin
When Moon Chae-ku tries to bring his father’s body back to their native Kwisong Island for burial, a legacy of bitter politics and hard choices blocks his way home. A group of islanders, still furious at how his father informed on Communist sympathizers decades earlier, won’t let Moon’s boat dock. Waiting in limbo, Moon’s memories trace the tortuous path of his father’s turbulent life.
Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 6:30PM Click here to buy tickets.
Green Fish 초록물고기
1997, 111 minutes
Director: Lee Chang-dong
Cast: Han Suk-kyu, Moon Sung-keun, Shim Hye-jin, Oh Ji-hye, Han Sun-kyu, Song Kang-ho, Jung Jin-young, Myung Kye-na
Makdong (meaning "youngest sibling") returns home after two years
of mandatory military service to find himself a stranger in a small
town that has urbanized beyond recognition. Jobless, penniless, and
unable to find work to support a family on the verge of falling apart,
he heads for Seoul and a world of trouble. A beautiful woman he
fortuitously saved on the train ride home leads him to a new life in
organized crime.
Green Fish, Lee Chang-dong's acclaimed début film, features an
all-star cast: Han Suk-kyu, arguably the most popular actor of the late
1990s; Shim Hye-jin, as the femme fatale; Song Kang-ho (
The Host, JSA, The Show Must Go On),
then fairly new on to the silver screen; Moon Sung-keun; Jung
Jin-young; Oh Ji-hye; Myung Kay-nam; and Han Suk-kyu's brother, Han
Sun-kyu. The film also benefited from a prestigious crew, including
producer Kang Woo-suk. Often called the most powerful man in Korean
cinema, Kang topped
Cine21 magazine's list of the “50 Most Powerful Men in Korean Cinema” for seven consecutive years (1998–2004).
At once a stark, contemporary noir and a controlled melodrama,
Green Fish
immediately conquered the critics and won the Dragons & Tigers
Award for new Asian directors at the 1997 Vancouver International Film
Festival. Prior to his first film, Lee wrote the scripts for Park
Kwang-soo's
To The Starry Island and
A Single Spark—both classics of the early 1990s.
In addition to a brief tenure as South Korean President Roh
Moo-hyun’s first Minister for Culture and Tourism, Lee moved on to
become one of South Korea's most prominent filmmakers.
Peppermint Candy (2000),
Oasis (2002), and his most recent feature,
Secret Sunshine (2007), have drawn widespread critical acclaim, with the latter winning a best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.
Thursday, April 17, 2008 at 6:30PM
Young-Ja's Heyday 영자의 전성 시대
1975, 107 minutes
Director: Kim Ho-seon
Cast: Yeom Bok-sun, Song Jae-ho and Choi Bul-am
Also known as
The Golden Age of Young-Ja and
Young-Ja: On the Loose
A colorful melodrama of lust and innocence lost,
Young-Ja's Heyday
was a box-office hit and serves as a flamboyant introduction to a key
Korean genre: the hostess film. Told through the reminiscences of an
old flame, this cautionary tale of a woman's tragic moral and physical
downfall has drawn comparisons with Kenji Mizoguchi's elegiac films,
which also focus on unhappy and exploited women.
