dir:KIM In-Sik
2002/35mm/114mins
Physically tough and emotionally brutal, Kim In-Sik's terrific debut feature takes macho masculinity literally to the end of the road. A young broker ruined in the stock market crash becomes a wino and starts sleeping on the streets. He's rescued and taken on a cross-country trip by another alcoholic, a former mountaineer who abandoned his wife and child and began drinking himself to death when he realised he was gay... Filmed guerrilla-style on locations across Korea, Roadmovie gets to the heart of its damaged characters with great intensity and uncompromising honesty. The most exciting debut in recent Korean cinema.
dir:PARK Ki-Yong
2002/35mm/91mins
A middle-aged man picks up a woman he hardly knows at Gimpo Airport and drives her to Wolgot, a small, sleazy enclave of restaurants, nightclubs and 'love hotels' on Korea's west coast. They eat, sing karaoke and then spend their first (and quite possibly last) night together. Park Ki-Yong's digital feature is a small triumph of naturalistic performance and close observation. Quietly and slowly, it watches two averagely care-worn individuals with no illusions about themselves or each other doing what it takes to keep going. Within formal limits which map out emotional and psychological boundaries, this is a miniaturist gem.
dirs: IM Soon-Rye, JEONG Jae-Eun, YEO Kyun-Dong, PARK Chan-Wook, PARK Jin-Pyo, PARK Kwang-Su
2003/35mm/110mins
Made to support the National Human Rights Commission, this anthology of shorts by six leading Korean directors (two of them women) tackles a phenomenal range of issues, from body fascism to the treatment of handicapped individuals and exploited immigrant workers. Unlike their Japanese contemporaries, Korean film-makers are drawn to (and comfortable with) social and political radicalism; all six episodes are both thoughtful and provocative. The two standouts are Im Soon-Rye on prejudices against fat women and Park Jin-Pyo on middle-class kids forced to undergo surgery to their tongues, supposedly to improve their English-speaking abilities.
dir:KIM Gok,KIM Sun
2001/video/55mins
TIME CONSCIOUSNESS
dir:KIM Gok,KIM Sun
2002/video/45mins
Twin brothers Kim Gok and Kim Sun are very possibly the most interesting and adventurous 'experimental' film-makers currently working in East Asia. Shot through with a dark wit, their films and videotapes frame political, psychological, social and sexual questions as conceptual riddles. Anti-Dialectic, seemingly inspired by a Magritte painting, centres on the laziest painter in Korea as he tries to figure out how best to represent an apple while screwing up his disastrous love-life. Time Consciousness is a conundrum exploring the relationship between an alcoholic poet and the prostitute who looks after him ... and, perhaps, a murder mystery.
dir:KIM Hong-joon
2002・2004/video/80mins(apprx.)
*This video will be 60 minutes long without the new chapter.
Sometime assistant to Im Kwon-Taek and director of two commercial features, Kim Hong-Joon now runs the PiFan Festival in Bucheon and teaches at the National Institute for the Arts. He's also Korea's foremost film essayist: this series of highly personal short tapes explores his feelings about Korean cinema, past and present, drawing on both his own experiences in the film industry and his discoveries amongst long-lost Korean genre movies of the 1960s and 1970s. Informative, touching, revelatory stuff. We're promised a brand-new chapter showing Im Kwon-Taek and Hong Sang-Soo at work on their new films.
dir:CHOI Hyun-jung
2003/video/58mins
SUGAR HILL
dir:LEE-SONG Hee-ll
2000/16mm/23mins
Choi Hyun-Jung's extraordinary tape documents her on-off friendship with 'J' (aka Park Ju-Young), a hermaphrodite who eventually opts for surgery to become 'fully' male. They first met in 2000 as college room-mates in Seoul, went their separate ways, and finally reconvened to complete the tape as a record of J's seemingly hopeless quest for a kind of 'normality'. with SUGAR HILL (dir LEE-SONG Hee-Il, 2000, 16mm, 23 mins) Lee-Song Hee-Il's film was a pioneering contribution to Korean Gay Liberation. Based on real events, it shows the disastrous marriage of a gay man who has never told his wife about his true desires.
IRREVERSIBLE
dir:PARK Kyung-Mok
2002/35mm/43mins
REST IN THE LIGHT
dir:KIM Dim
2002/16mm/30mins
WONDERFUL DAY
dir:KIM Hyeon-Pil
2003/16mm/32mins
In Korea, medium-length narrative short films can still serve as 'calling cards' for jobs in the film industry -- and so many are made every year. This programme comprises three of the most ambitious examples from the past year. Kim Hyeon-Pil's Wonderful Day (32 mins, screened in the Cannes Cinefondation section) imagines a 'scandalous' small-town friendship between a blind boy and a car mechanic. Park Kyung-Mok's Irreversible (43 mins) is about the apparently failing relationship between videographer Jung-Nam and schoolteacher Hae-Sook; it takes indie film-making into the realms of Hong Sang-Soo and Murakami Haruki. And Kim Dim's wordless Rest in the Light (30 mins) offers a series of vignettes centred on four characters -- which may or may not add up to a storyline.
SHAVE
dir:SHIN Su-Won
2003/35mm/33mins
GOOD ROMMANCE
dir:LEE-SONG Hee-il
2001/video/28mins
STORYBLIND
dir:BYUN Seung-Hyun
2001/16mm/15mins
PISTOL
dir:SUN Hwan-Young/Won Jong-Du
1999/16mm/8mins
THE SCISSORS
dir:LEE Ki-Cheol
2000/16mm/14mins
THE ANATOMY CLASS
dir:ZUNG So-Yun
2000/16mm/12mins
This programme of six outstanding short films (some by film school graduates, others not) illustrates the full range and vitality of Korea's current film culture. Shin Su-Won's Shave (33 mins) tests the bond between a deadbeat father (played by the great actor Myung Kay-Nam) and his son, who is terrorised by three bullies at school. Lee Ki-Cheol's Scissors (14 mins) spins a blackly comic shaggy-dog-story around a pair of scissors framed in a barber's shop. Zung So-Yun's The Anatomy Class (12 mins) imagines a female-dominant future. Byun Seung-Hyun's Storyblind (15 mins) charts three-and-a-bit days in the life of a bored photographer. Sun Hwan-Young & Won Jong-Du's Pistol (8 mins) reveals the violent thoughts of a young man during a phone conversation. And Lee-Song Hee-Il's Good Romance (28 mins) explores the chasm between a 33-year-old woman and the highschool boy she is dating.
15
dir:'Outflow' group
2003/video/11mins
dir: JUN Ha-Mok/YUN Do-Ick
2000/video/5mins
dir:SEO In-Kyonung
2003/35mm/8mins
dir:CHANG Hyung-Yun
2003/35mm/10mins
dir: BANG Eui-Seok/KWON Taek-Hwa
2003/35mm/10mins
dir:LEE Sung-Gang
2003/video/16mins
dir:CHOI Min-Ho
2003/video/12mins
dir: JO Se-Heon/JO Seong-Yoon
2003/video/6mins
2004 The Agency for Cultural Affairs. ALL RIGHT RESERVED