Author: Yurim Oh

 

North American Premiere

Rough. Raw. Real. The Kim Ki-duk school of filmmaking has given us several great projects produced and written by Kim and directed by young filmmakers: Poongsan, Bedevilled, and now we have Rough Cut’s spiritual successor in Rough Play. The film opens with crazed actor Oh Yeong (K-Pop idol Lee Joon playing totally against type) dragging a mannequin up the stairs of a department store and spouting some rather menacing dialogue. Intercut with this is a stage performance from early in his career where Oh takes his performance a bit too far and threatens the actress he’s doing a scene with. The rest of the film expands outward from these two moments and shows Oh’s rise and violent fall under the influence of mobbish manager Kim Jang-ho (Seo Bum-suk). Lee Joon is absolutely captivating in a performance that is all about the destruction that narcissism and rampant ego can bring. He lets it all hang out and embodies Oh’s (literally) insane dedication to his craft. A darker than dark take on the Korean film industry, Rough Play rails against the apathy of a business wholly concerned with appearance and that gives no long-term thought to the future.

 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014 | 6:30 PM

Thursday, July 3, 2014 | 3:30 PM

ROUGH PLAY
배우는 배우다 | SHIN YEON-SHICK, 2013
SOUTH KOREA | KOREAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 98 MINUTES

 

 $10 affiliate rate for The Korea Society members.
You can also purchase at the box office by showing your membership card
or mention “The Korea Society.”

 

Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

 

New York Asian Film Festival 2014

 

 

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

 

New York Premiere

A playfully twisted black comedy with no dialogue, Moebius is an everyday tale of penectomy, rape, sadomasochistic sex, and incestuous love. It continues maverick writer-director Kim Ki-duk’s journey into the madness of the Korean soul—though in a much more in-your-face way than last year’s Pietà. Marbled with references to earlier films like The Isle (genital mutilation), Bad Guy (tough, twisted love), and Pietà (“mother” love), plus numerous other titles, Moebius is a quintessentially Kim Ki-duk movie in its risk-taking and outsider feel, and could have been made by no other filmmaker currently working in the country. Words have never formed a major component of Kim’s films, which reveal themselves more through physical action than dialogue. But the absence here of any words (along with any names for the characters) brings an even more allegorical, universal aspect to the movie’s themes while still leaving it feeling absolutely Korean in its emotional intensity. Moebius’s sheer cheek and bravado is more than welcome at a time when South Korea’s film industry has become more and more conventional, predictable, and risk-averse.

 

Tickets include special entry to 8 PM reception with actress Lee Eun Woo, “Moebius,” Shin Yeon-shick, director of “Rough Play,” and Lee Su-jin, director of “Han Gong-ju.” 

 

Light refreshments and appetizers will be served. Limited seats available.

 

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

8:00 PM | Reception

9:30 PM | Film

MOEBIUS
뫼비우스 | KIM KI-DUK , 2013
SOUTH KOREA | NO DIALOGUE | FORMAT: DCP | 90 MINUTES

 

$10 affiliate rate for The Korea Society members.
You can also purchase at the box office by showing your membership card
or mention “The Korea Society.”

 

Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

 

New York Asian Film Festival 2014

 

 

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

 

 

New York Premiere

Praised by Martin Scorsese, who presented it with the Golden Star for Best Film at the Marrakech International Film Festival last year, the feature debut from writer-director Lee Su-jin has walked a path strewn with prizes since it premiered at the 2013 Busan International Film Festival, where it won two awards, and went on to win the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam International Film Festival. A devastating portrait of South Korea’s blame culture, embedded cronyism and destructive family pressures, the film follows a high-school girl, by the name of Han Gong-ju, as she seeks anonymity and escape from the horror of an unnamed past experience. Han Gong-ju focuses largely on the aftermath, rather than the event itself. Refreshingly free of self-pitying trauma, the film offers the beautiful character of a young girl, almost a woman, who, in the face of social stigmatization, stands radiant, strong, and self-reliant… not given easily to tears and only wanting to rebuild her life after moving away from home. With her mother divorced and her father on the bottle, Gong-ju works out her own problems, fiercely defending her privacy from new school friends. Strong, compelling, and anchored by a superb lead performance by Chun Woo-hee, Han Gong-ju is a standout social and psychological drama.

 

HAN GONG-JU
한공주 | LEE SU-JIN, 2014
SOUTH KOREA | KOREAN WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES | FORMAT: DCP | 114 MINUTES

 

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Walter Reade Theater

165 West 65th Street, New York, NY

Monday, June 30, 2014 | 6 PM

 

$10 affiliate rate for The Korea Society members.
You can also purchase at the box office by showing your membership card
or mention “The Korea Society.”

 

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MoMA | Museum of Modern Art

11 W 53rd St, New York, NY 10019

 

Tuesday, July 1, 2014 | 7 PM, Theater 2, T2
(Followed by discussion with Su-jin Lee)

Wednesday, July 2, 2014 | 4 PM, Theater 2, T2

Thursday, July 3, 2014 | 7 PM, Theater 2, T2

Friday, July 4, 2014 | 4:30  PM, Theater 2, T2

Saturday, July 5, 2014 | 4 PM, Theater 2, T2

Sunday, July 6, 2014 | 2 PM, Theater 2, T2

Monday, July 7, 2014 | 4:30  PM, Theater 2, T2

 

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New York Asian Film Festival 2014

 

 

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