There is no doubt that Bong Joon-ho is a visionary filmmaker. And with six features under his belt (Snowpiercer, Mother, The Host, Memory of Murder, Barking Dogs Never Bite), including his newest production, the Netflix original Okja, there is no sign of him slowing down. Okja premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival; it connects drama, family…
Category: Korean Cinema
19th Far East Film Festival: New Trial
Injustice, corruption, and oppression of the underprivileged are continuing topics in the South Korean motion pictures, but instead of focusing on the themes of personal vengeance, filmmakers often turn to common social issues to raise public awareness. 2000. In the southern city of Iksan, a 15-year-old boy was sentenced to 10 years in prison for…
19th Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy (21st – 29th April, 2017)
In less than a week, the 19th edition of the Far East Film Festival (FEFF) will open the doors of Teatro Nuovo “Giovanni da Udine” in Udine, Italy, and East Asian cinema will reign over the little city in the Italian Friuli-Venezia Giulia region for a full 9 days (21st – 29th April 2017). The FEFF…
The King Review
Jung Woo-sung. Jo In-sung. Ryu Jun-yeol. It’s hard to aim and miss with a bullet that is riding on the waves of these three audience-favourite names; and especially so when the shot is fired by Han Jae-rim, who both wrote and directed The King and who – following the success of his period drama The…
Lee Gae-byok’s Luck-Key
Body- and identity-swaps have been explored by Hollywood since the 1970’s; unfortunately, most of those films are just wacky comedies. Unexpectedly, Asian cinema has been keeping up with this trend of the la la land and has produced a few worthy productions, including the Japanese Key of Life by Kenji Uchida (Weekend Blues, A Stranger of…
Hong Ji-young’s Will You Be There?
Surprisingly, last year was fairly fruitful for the female filmmakers in South Korea. Most of their films – perhaps slightly unappreciated by the mainstream cinema critics – have been cherished by many film goers. One of those films is Will You Be There?, the first adaptation of Guillaume Musso’s 2006 bestselling novel with the same…
Missing Review
After a lengthy hiatus, Lee Eon-hie finally grabbed a pen and paper – as well as camera – and created (with some help from Hong Eun-mi) her first thriller Missing, which features two well-known Korean actresses: Uhm Ji-won (Master, The Silenced, Wish) and Kong Hyo-jin (Single Rider, Boomerang Family, Crush and Blush). Missing depicts a story…
In Conversation with Baek Yoon-sik
Baek Yoon-sik is a South Korean actor who first made a name for himself in the 1970’s as a film and TV actor, but then focused solely on his TV career – until 2003 when he decided to take a role in the now cult film Save the Green Planet – his film career got…
The 11th London Korean Film Festival: Alone
Imagine yourself waking up in a nightmare, a nightmare that you can not escape; what would you do? Park Hong-min’s Alone traps his key character Su-min (Lee Ju-won) in the endless ephialtes which occur in silent, hovel and labyrinthine alleys. Su-min, an avid photographer, captures on his camera – while taking pictures from his apartment’s roof…
The 11th London Korean Film Festival: Breathing Underwater
On the gorgeous Korean islands of Jeju and Udo (and the surrounding islets of Jeju province), almost every day, over 4000 women risk their lives to challenge the sea in order to bring out its treasures – sea urchin, conch, algae, octopus, and the highly treasured abalone. They are called haenyo – sea women – and…
In Conversation with Cho Hyun-hoon, director of ‘Jane’
Cho Hyun-hoon’s professional voyage into filmmaking started when his short film Metamorphosis got invited to Busan Asian Short Film Festival in 2007. In 2013, another short film of his, The Mother’s Family, was invited to Indie Forum Mise-en-scene Short Film Festival; the short was relatively successful; it won the Acting Award during Busan International Short…
In Conversation with Park Hong-min, director of ‘Alone’
After his attention-pulling debut A Fish (2011), South Korean film director Park Hong-min returned in 2015 with his second feature Alone that wowed audiences both in Korea and abroad, winning several awards and making rounds on several global film festivals – it is no wonder that the director got invited as a guest to this year’s…
The Net (그물) Review
Kim Ki-duk. You either dislike him or admire him for his extraordinary – and every so often, repulsive – filmmaking. That said, no matter what subject matter he tackles, he always finds an appreciative audience. Despite his lack of formal education, he has become one of the most prominent film directors of modern cinema; and…
The 11th London Korean Film Festival: In Conversation with Jung Woo-sung & Kim Sung-soo
During this year’s London Korean Film Festival, we had a chance to meet and interview- along with MyM, Hangul Celluloid- Kim Sung-soo and Jung Woo-sung. Hangul Celluloid: You’re here promoting Asura: The City of Madness, your latest film, why did you decide to set it in a fictional city rather than in a normal Korean…
