Author: Yurim Oh

Filmmaker Hark-Joon Lee chronicles the making of an all girl band in this insightful documentary on K-Pop—the multi-billion dollar South Korean musical entertainment industry. 9 Muses of Star Empire follows the nine young women in a new girl group for a year as they are molded and trained by the powerful Star Empire Agency to be the next big K-pop sensation. As the everyday life of these girls unfolds, they relentlessly pursue their dreams in a world of jealousy, betrayal, and scandal. You’ll never look at K-Pop in quite the same way.

Following the screening, director Hark Joon Lee will be available to answer questions about the documentary, as well as what’s happened to 9 Muses since the 2010 filming.

(82 minutes, 2012)

Directed by Hark Joon Lee

Produced by Min-Chul Kim (Minch & Films) and Suk Kee Lee (Style Chosun)

Thursday, April 17, 2014  |  7:00 PM

The Korea Society
950 Third Ave., 8th Fl
(Entrance on 57th St.)

Members and Students: Free

Non-members: $10

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.

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Co-presented with KAFFNY

Director Hark-Joon Lee, long-time reporter turned filmmaker, discusses his amazing, and in some cases life-threatening, experiences making documentaries on two wildly different subjects: North Korean defectors trying to escape to freedom and K-Pop, Korea’s musical entertainment industry. Lee deeply embeds himself in his film projects and goes to extraordinary lengths in pursuit of stories he thinks are worth telling.

From 2007 to 2011, Director Lee lived among North Korean defectors in China filming episodes which tell the moving and dramatic stories of a few of the many North Korean defectors who have crossed into China and made the harrowing journey along the 20,000 kilometer escape route stretching through China to Laos and Thailand or north into Russia, traveling through Khabarovsk, Tynda and on to Moscow. Posing as a North Korean defector, Lee risked his life filming undercover to capture the haunting stories first-hand. He witnessed human trafficking, the smuggling of illicit drugs by North Korean soldiers, and a rare successful escape from North Korea by sea. Crossing Heaven’s Border, which captures several of these harrowing, heartbreaking stories, aired in 2009 on Wide Angle, a PBS series, and received an Amnesty International’s best in human rights journalism award and a 2010 Emmy award nomination.  Another documentary, Across Land, Across Sea, received an Emmy nomination in 2012 and has been shown in Korea and Europe.

For his documentary, 9 Muses of Star Empire, Lee got extraordinary access to the inner workings of the Star Empire agency by agreeing to become the 9 Muses’ manager during the year-long filming of the band as they prepared to make their debut. What emerges is a fascinating look at Korea’s musical entertainment industry, as well as a candid portrait of a physically grueling and psychologically challenging life, where the young singers must decide whether the price of fame is worth it.

In order to experience Hark-Joon Lee’s work, The Korea Society will be showing Across Land, Across Sea for the first time in the U.S. on April 16 at 6 PM, preceding our talk with Director Lee. 9 Muses of Star Empire will be shown at The Korea Society on April 17 at 7 PM. You can also watch his award-winning Crossing Heaven’s Border on PBS’s Web site.

    Across Land, Across Sea                9 Muses of Star Empire                   Crossing Heaven’s Border

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

6:00 PM  |  Pre-Program Screening of Across Land, Across Sea

7:00 PM  |  Director’s Talk with Hark-Joon Lee

The Korea Society
950 Third Avenue, 8th floor
New York, NY 10022

Explorers and Above: Free

Students:  $5

Members: $10

Non-members: $20

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.

Co-presented with KAFFNY

 Contemporary Culture programs are generously sponsored by CJ

A Conversation With Nicolas Archambault, Director of Asian Programming, Fantasia International Film Festival, and Tom Vick, Curator of Film Freer and Sackler Galleries, Smithsonian Institution. Moderated by Samuel Jamier, Co-Director New York Asian Film Festival and Rufus de Rham, Director of Operations for Subway Cinema, organizers of the New York Asian Film Festival.

Boasting record box office numbers and critical accolades from the major film festival circuit, Korean cinema has seen a spectacular boom. New blood has pumped life into the Korean film business, while established Korean filmmakers have been making their Hollywood debuts (Kim Jee-woon with The Last Stand, Park Chan-wook with Stoker, and Bong Joon-ho with the Korean-produced English-language Snowpiercer). Industry commentators and observers have talked about a “renaissance” or even a new “golden age” of Korean cinema, after the sluggish recovery from the slump of 2007-08.

The Korea Society and the New York Asian Film Festival, working together to promote multi-cultural collaboration, are delighted to present Nicolas Archambault, Director of Asian Programming, Fantasia International Film Festival, and Tom Vick, Curator of Film of the Freer and Sackler Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution. They will consider the prospects of Korean cinema, for the near and long term, in the context of its recent achievements.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014 | 6:30 PM