Park Chan-Wook in Berlin, 2007

Even though a lot of people had left the theater during the press screening of I'm a Cyborg But That's OK, obviously unmoved or repelled by the extreme visual and narrative quirks that seem to be Park Chan-Wook's signature, the jury presided by Paul Schrader was seduced by the unique directing style of the author of Old Boy (which earned the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004) and its Vengeance-sympathetic brother and sister. Director Park received the Alfred Bauer Prize on Sunday, February 17th, while I was utterly absorbed by the preparation of the Bong Joon-Ho mini film festival. The award (one of the event's main eight distinctions), named after the renowned German photography director who was also the first director of the “Berlinale”, honors a particularly innovating work that “opens new perspectives in the art of filmmaking”. Director Jang Sun-Woo's film Hwaeomkyung also received this award in 1994.

Director Park Chan-Wook in front of the Berlinale "Palast" last year (Feb. 2006):

a lone protest against the reduced screen quota in South Korea

Park Chan-Wook's acceptance speech was chosen as one of the best speeches of the day by various news agencies.

“I would like to share this award with my wife. She is very unhappy with my career as a director. I am not home for weeks, busy all the time and even when I am home my head is full of other thoughts,” Park declared. “She is now here sharing this honor with me -- I hope she will now forgive me. When I get home, I hope she will tell our friends, 'My husband is a director but that's OK.' ”

Director Park acted as the “Mentor” of last year's Berlinale Talent Campus, the 5th edition of the intensive week-long academy that takes place in parallel with the festival and includes a series of workshops, lectures and panel discussions.

I'm a Cyborg But That's OK will be premiered in the US at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, on March 17th, as the closing piece. It has also been selected as the opening film for the 31st Hong Kong Film Festival on March 20th. The film is nominated for two Asian Film Awards (AFA); Rain for Best Actor and Lim Soo-jung for Best Actress.

The Chinese film Tuya's Marriage, by Wang Quan'an, took the top distinction of the German film festival: the Golden Bear for best picture. By a strange whim of karma, or whatever you want to call it, the story, about a woman who struggles to earn a living for her family in the steppes of Inner Mongolia and has to abandon her disabled husband for a better spouse, is yet another reminder of a film review I have been tormented (tortured would be more exact) with for the past few days (Ning Hao's Mongolian Ping-Pong). Not sure I will venture to write about this one. Then again, the odds that I will review another Mongolian-themed Hyazgar (Desert Dream) sooner or later are pretty high.