Curated by Gina Kim and is co-presented with the Film and Video Center
at University of California, Irvine.
Guests: * Director Im Kwon-taek in person March 4 and 5.
Director Kim Dong-won in person March 21.
Director E J-Yong in Person April 18.
where: Harvard Film Archive, 24 Quincy St. Cambridge MA 02138, 617 495
4700, www.harvardfilmarchive.org
when: March 2 - May 9, 2005
Tickets: $8/$6,* tickets for Chihwaseon and Chunhyang with director
Im Kwon-taek in person are $10/$12 and may be purchased at The Harvard
Box Office, 1350 Mass Ave, Holyoke Center Arcade, 617 496-2222.
Drawing examples from horror films that allegorize the disintegration
of masculinity and patriarchy in the 1960s, emotional exploitations of
human relationships in the 1980s, and brutally painful portraits of
degraded intellectuals in the 1990s, this film series presents a
compelling cross-section of an increasingly vital national cinema that
has recently spurred retrospectives in major film festivals and venues
across the world including Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Smithsonian
(Washington D.C.), and Film Society of Lincoln Center (New York).
Program notes adapted from the Korean Film Festival DC, the
Post-Colonial Classics of Korean Cinema Film Festival at UC Irvine and
the Film Society of Lincoln Center.
March 2 (Wednesday) 9 pm
The Aimless Bullet (Obaltıan)
Directed by Yu Hyun-mok
South Korea 1960, 35mm, b/w, 110 min.
With Mu-ryong Choi, Jin Kyu Kin, Jeong-suk Moon
Korean with English subtitles
Director Yu Hyun-mok deliberately avoided the lure of melodrama despite
its popularity during the 1950s and 1960s in favor of realist themes
and literary subjects. Set in the years following the Korean War, the
film dramatizes post-war anxiety and pessimism by focusing on a North
Korean family relocated to the South that cannot make ends meet. One of
the sons tries to succeed by pushing the boundaries of the law while
his sister prostitutes herself for American GIs. Recalling the visual
style of both German Expressionism and Italian Neorealism, the film
finds great strength in its honest representation of life in
post-colonial Seoul.
Director in Person
March 4 (Friday) 7 pm
Chihwaseon
Directed by Im Kwon-taek
South Korea 2002, 35mm, color, 117 min.
With Min-sik Choi, Sung-kee Ahn, Ho-jeong Yu
Korean with English subtitles
See Description in Three by Im Kwon-taek, p.?
Director in Person
March 5 (Saturday) 7pm
Chunhyang
Directed by Im Kwon-taek
South Korea 2000, 35mm, color, 120 min.
With Hyo-jeong Lee, Seung-woo Cho, Sung-nyu Kim
Korean with English subtitles
See Description in Three by Im Kwon-taek, p.?
March 7 (Monday) 7 pm
Sopyonje
Directed by Im Kwon-taek
South Korea 1993, 35mm, color, 112 min.
With Myung-gon Kim, Jung-hae Oh, Kyu-chul Kim
Korean with English subtitles
See Description in Three by Im Kwon-taek, p.?
March 14 (Monday) 7 pm
Chilsu and Mansu
Directed by Park Kwang-su
South Korea 1988, 35mm, color, 109 min.
With Sung-kee Ahn, Chong-ok Bae, Joong-Hoon Park
Korean with English subtitles
Chilsu is a gifted painter from a modest background who dreams about
moving to the United States to join up with his sister. In the
meantime, he works as an assistant to Mansu, whose business is painting
ads for billboards. Mansu would also like to go abroad, but his
father's political past prevents him from getting a visa. As tensions
mount in their lives, the two men climb to the top of a large building
on which they've been working and shout out their feelings about life
and society drawing the attention of a crowd of onlookers and local
authorities. An extraordinarily impressive debut for Park Kwang-su,
Chilsu and Mansu caught the spirit of frustration and rebelliousness
felt by the young after the beginning of the re-democratization of
South Korea. His two leads have an appealing everydayness to them,
which makes the escalating confrontation with the police seem so
ultimately and tragically unnecessary.
Director in Person
March 21 (Monday) 6:30 pm
Repatriation
Directed by Kim Dong-won
North Korea/South Korea 2003, video, color, 149 min.
Korean with English subtitles
In the spring of 1992 documentary filmmaker Dong-won Kim met Cho
Chang-son and Kim Seak-hyoung, two North Koreans arrested by South
Korean authorities years before. Convicted of spying for the North,
they were incarcerated and spent thirty years as political prisoners.
These men, and many others like them, underwent conversion schemes in
prison that involved torture: those who renounced their communist
beliefs were released from prison early. The others, known as "the
unconverted," served their full terms. None could return home to the
North, however, until the turn of this century, when tensions between
North and South eased significantly. Director Dong-won Kim followed
these men for ten years, documenting how they survived both
physically and psychologically the dehumanizing time spent in prison,
and their quest, once released, to finally go home.
April 4 (Monday) 7 pm
Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors (O! Suj ng)
Directed by Hong Sang-soo
South Korea 2000, 35mm, b/w, 126 min.
With Myeong-gu Han, Jeong Ho-Bong, Lee Hwang-Ui
Korean with English subtitles
Director Hong Sang-soo's trademark dry wit and powerful visual style
are on full display in this sly head game of a movie. Divided into two
parts, it follows an awkward relationship among a filmmaker, his
friend, and a beautiful woman. The first half presents the story, and
the second half retells it with significant details altered in
mysterious ways. Recalling the elliptical, modernist works of Alain
Resnais, the film, which draws its title from a Marcel Duchamp piece
titled ³The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,² provides a bold yet
humorous reflection on memory and perspective.
April 11 (Monday) 7 pm
Oasis
Directed by Lee Chang-dong
South Korea 2002, 35mm, color, 133 min.
With Kyung-gu Sol, So-ri Moon, Nae-sang Ahn
Korean with English subtitles
After serving a prison term for a crime that was committed by his
brother, Jong-Du seeks out the family of the man he was convicted of
killing in a hit-and-run accident. Even though he is shunned by the
victimıs family, Jong Du becomes intrigued by the manıs daughter, a
young woman afflicted with cerebral palsy. After a number of secret
encounters and outings, the couple fall in love and are confronted by
the harsh reality of a discriminating society. Still, their love
continues to grow until a surprise visit by her brother. Director Lee
Chang-dong offers a poignant yet realistic portrait of love against the
odds.
Director in Person
April 18 (Monday) 7 pm
Untold Scandal
Directed by E J-Yong
South Korea 2003, 35mm, color, 124 min.
With Mi-suk Lee, Do-yeon Jeon, Yong-jun Bae
Korean with English subtitles
Based on the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Untold Scandal is set in
aristocratic 18th-century Korea at the end of the Chosun Dynasty. The
irresistible temptress Lady Cho (Lee Mi-Suk) asks her cad of a younger
cousin, Jo-won (Bae Yong-Jun), to deflower the innocent young Soh-ok
(Lee So-Yeon), who is to become her husband's concubine. But his
attentions soon shift to the graceful and aloof Lady Sook (Jeon
Do-Yeaon) who lives according to her convictions as a Catholic. Jo-won
becomes obsessed with seducing this chaste woman who has remained
celibate for nine years since her husband's death. However, it proves
to be more difficult than he expected when Chosun's notorious playboy
sets out to conquer the most virtuous woman in the land.
April 25 (Monday) 7 pm
Camel(s)
Directed by Park Ki-yong
South Korea 2002, 35mm, b/w, 91 min.
With Dae-yeon Lee, Myeong-shin Park
Korean with English subtitles
With its perfectly composed takes and nuanced acting performances,
Camel(s) offers a moving account of a weekend affair in a coastal town
between an undertaker and a pharmacist. Director Park Ki-yong's style
lies somewhere between documentary and voyeuristic, as his calmly
observant camera slowly reveals the details of the couple's lives
through subtle gestures and bits of conversation. The result is simply
hypnotic.
May 2 (Monday) 7 pm
Tales of Two Sisters
Directed by Kim Ji-woon
South Korea 2003, 35mm, color, 115 min.
With Kap-su Kim, Jung-ah Yum, Su-jeong Lim
Korean with English subtitles
As countless Asian psychological horror films find their way to the
American multiplexes as Hollywood remakes, this screening marks a
opportunity to see a true original. When two little girls are sent to
live with their wicked stepmother in the country, strange events occur.
Director Kim Ji-woon spends most of his film focused on the quiet,
stately rhythms of family life before making an audacious, surrealist
turn. Jung-ah Yum gives a manic performance as the stepmother on par
with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? and Faye Dunaway in
Mommie Dearest.
May 9 (Monday) 7 pm
JSA (aka Joint Security Area)
Directed by Park Chan-wook
South Korea 2000, 35mm, color, 110 min.
With Yeong-ae Lee, Byung-hun Lee, Kang-ho Song
Korean and English with English subtitles
JSA is a film of bizarre proportions: the biggest budget film to come
out of Korea and the most commercially successful, yet an intimate,
character-driven drama. The film telescopes the psychic damage wrought
by the entire Cold War into the lives of five small people. A mystery
wrapped in a conundrum, the movie starts with a present-day incident on
the border that leaves a group of both North and South Korean soldiers
either wounded or dead and opens up a door into the past. Alternately
tragic and hilarious, this larger-than-life film finds a strong human
element to examine the conflicted nature of modern Korean identity.
