The subject of ‘comfort women’ has always been a complex and uncomfortable one for the Japanese government. 40 years after the Second World War ended, Japan finally acknowledged that the country forced many Korean women and teenagers into military brothels. Sadly, for some people and the ‘comfort women’ in particular, this wasn’t seen as sincere apology….
Tag: film
The 1st London East Asia Film Festival: Tunnel
Hunger, thirst, anxiety, a struggle to save a man’s life and the craft of drinking urine are the highlights of Kim Seong-hun’s new film Tunnel. Previously known for his action-packed film Hard Day, the film director has decided to put his next protagonist in a collapsed tunnel, just to make his life more depressing. It all…
The 21st Busan International Film Festival: Jane
Jane – a film about Sohyun (Lee Min-ji), a runaway – is a 2016 feature debut from Cho Hyun-hoon. The director’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…
The 21st Busan International Film Festival: The Last Princess
‘Tis the year for Japanese occupation era films in South Korean Cinema, it would seem – there has been a flood of them, with the most noticeable – The Age of Shadows (2016, Kim Jee-woon) – even selected as South Korea’s candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film of the 2017 Academy Awards. The Last Princess falls into this…
The 21st Busan International Film Festival: In Between Seasons
Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) is divided into several sections; among these, the international competition “New Currents” section holds the most importance for the new and emerging Asian directors; each year, only the select promising directors with their first or at most second features can take part in the competition to win the prestigious New Currents…
The 21st Busan International Film Festival: The Salesman
Asghar Farhadi, an Iranian filmmaker, made his first short film at the age of 13, while he attended a youth drama club. He shaped his film-making style gradually while studying Harold Pinter’s plays at the University of Teheran. He then moved on to study stage direction at the Tarbias Modares University, where he wrote for television and also wrote…
The 21st Busan International Film Festival: The Age of Shadows
Kim Jee-woon is a natural-born filmmaker who, with his alluring script-writing, has never been afraid to tackle a new film genre. With eight feature films and six shorts under his belt, he has already gone down in film history as one of the most influential Korean directors. Kim Jee-woon had no formal training in filmmaking; he…
The 21st Busan International Film Festival: Highlights of the Opening Night
The 21st Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) has finally kicked off with Zhang Lu’s A Quiet Dream; ahead of the opening night, there was a press conference for the film which was attended by the film director Lu himself, Yang Ik-june (an actor and a director, known for his independent film productions) and Lee Joo-young; on…
Introduction to Busan International Film Festival (BIFF)
Busan International Film Festival (BIFF for short) is the largest Asian film festival – and among the most prominent film festivals in the whole of Asia – that is held annually in the second largest South Korean city of Busan. The year 2016 marks already the 21st edition of the festival, even though its future…
In Conversation with Richard Wyllie
Richard Wyllie has been directing documentary films for over a decade, for channels including BBC1, ITV and Channel 4 in the UK, and PBS and Nat Geo in the US. He was part of a team that won the Royal Television Society Journalism award for their Channel 4 Dispatches investigation into the ‘Plebgate’ scandal, and…
VIEW OF THE ARTS 