Busan 2014 Review: A MIDSUMMER'S FANTASIA Effortlessly Draws You Into Its Subtle Tale

Part of MKC's coverage of the 19th Busan International Film Festival

By Pierce Conran

Taking place in the quiet town of Gojo in Japan, an ageing community tinged with a lingering sadness and marked by stillness, A Midsummer's Fantasia is a wistful, hopeful and nostalgic third feature by rising Korean indie auteur Jang Kunjae.

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Busan 2014 Review: ENTANGLED Gets Caught Up in Its Own Depressing Narrative

Part of MKC's coverage of the 19th Busan International Film Festival

By Pierce Conran

Following the blistering debut Fatal, a gritty rape-revenge thriller that bowed at the Busan Film Festival in 2012, Lee Don-ku returns to Busan with the disappointing family drama Entangled. Though it seeks to inspire a similar sense of shock and outrage with its raw family dynamics and desperate plot turns, Lee's matter-of-fact mise-en-scene and his narrative's inherent histrionics combine to form a humdrum and overly familiar Korean indie.

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Berlinale 2014 Review: NON-FICTION DIARY Offers Captivating Glimpse of 1990s Korea

Part of MKC's coverage of the 64th Berlin International Film Festival and the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

I stepped onto Korean soil for the first time almost 13 years after the end of the 1990s but there's no arguing the otherworldliness of that time, which can still be picked up on today by sampling the available media from that era. These days, some Koreans even reminisce about that special, indefinable feeling if a certain 90s song pops on in a basement bar.

Though a fan of documentaries, I've remained somewhat on the periphery concerning those from Korea despite my keen interest for the rest of the industry's output. A number of the subjects that they embark on are captivating, even essential at times, but they haven't always been made in the most gripping fashion. Mind you, I'm loath to admit that I still haven't seen some of the major recent successes, such as Talking Architect (2011) and Planet of Snail.

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Busan 2013 Review: Personal and Subdued PASCHA Resonates

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Life has a habit of moving on, whether we'd like it to or not. Moments of joy are fleeting and even our most crushing lows are washed away by the waves of time. Our present always leaves us, replaced to perpetuity with new realities: it's gone but never quite forgotten. The new Korean indie Pascha shows us that small moments can be hard to bare and smaller ones still may often be worth cherishing, but it also reminds us that nothing every truly disappears, particularly when it concerns (what else?) love.

Anyone who has kept an eye on Korean cinema over the last few years will likely have encountered more than his or her fair share or bleak narratives, particularly in the independent realm. Though they're not always fun, there is a need for this kind of cinema at the moment. In the midst of Korea's technological advances, it's easy to forget that other areas of the country are in desperate need of attention. That said, a few of the more dour offerings that have come our way could do worse than take a leaf out of Pascha's book, as it explores some of the less salient sides of Korean society in a sublimely low-key fashion.

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Busan 2013 Review: Thoughtful STEEL COLD WINTER Doesn't Stray from Its Comfort Zone

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Pierce Conran

Sometimes, even the most skillfully assembled volley of words can do little to express our feelings or explain our past experiences. There are moments, so great, that they are beyond words or others, so terrible, that could never truly be conveyed with a the help of a dictionary. Throughout modern Korean cinema we've been introduced to characters so badly scarred that they've lost the ability to speak. In Choi Jin-seong's Steel Cold Winter, the young protagonists do speak, but they do so so reluctantly that it's as though they've been robbed of their ability to do so.

A teenage boy moves with his mother to the countryside, while the father remains in Seoul, after he witnesses one of his friends fall to his death. In a quiet snow-covered village where he will ideally get his mind off the incident, he meets a mysterious girl who he becomes attracted to. She lives with her mentally handicapped father until one day he disappears.

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Busan 2013 Review: Balls of Fury - The King of Jogku

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

(by Rex Baylon)

The struggle of one team or individual to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles has been popular fodder for films since the silent era. Early silent shorts by esteemed comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Harold Lloyd have built entire careers by donning the role of the underdog. In these early works the template for all future sports films, comedy or otherwise, was set down in cinematic stone. The hero is often schlubby, unpopular, and often pegged as more dreamer than doer. A love interest is usually injected into the story to offer our hero pep talks and scold them for losing focus. And, of course, the film’s antagonist is the very embodiment of physical perfection, though with one thing lacking, the spirit of the “good” sportsman. While our hero may not be able to shoot a basket through a hoop or net, fight like one of the Cobra Kai, or have a well-toned physique our titular hero is a stand-in for us, born with all our faults but embodying our most treasured ideals.

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Busan 2013 Review: The Fake Is a Bleak and Devastating Experience

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

Terrible things happen all the time but it's easy to ignore what goes on around us. Sometimes, we even fail to see what's right in front of us. Independent films, at least those with a realistic bent, frequently attempt to educate us by plainly us showing the realities of the world we live in but they don't always move us the way filmmakers would like them to. Sometimes it's the fault of poor storytelling, mise-en-scene or acting, but more often than not, the fault lies with us. Among the reasons that we avoid what is plain to see is the diluted effect of these narratives, after decades of similarly minded cinema.

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Busan 2013 Review: Mot Explores Youth in Revolt

Part of MKC's coverage of the 18th Busan International Film Festival.

By Rex Baylon

Water is the most malleable element in nature. It can inhabit different material states, i.e. liquid, gas, and solid. It can adapt itself to any shape it needs to be in and in purely literary terms water occupies a panoply of meanings, be it good, bad, or ambiguous. In Seo Ho-bin’s directorial debut, Mot (2013), water takes on the familiar meaning of a buried secret that won’t stay concealed. For Hyung-myung and his friends, the last day of high school should have been a happy memory. Hyung-myung’s friend, Sung-pil, envisions a future unrestricted by parents and teachers telling him what to do. For his sister Kyung-min the possibility of romance hangs heavily on her mind.  

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Channeling the Classics: The Russian Novel (러시안 소설) 2012

Though I scarcely have the time to read these days there are a few classic works of literature I always go back to. On the one hand the French Naturalists taught me morality and on the other the great Russian novels forced me to grapple with existentialism and taught me about love. Tolstoy, Dostoyesky, Pushkin, Lermontov, and more had the ability to tip the balance of life from one extreme to the next, all in the flick of a page. Leafing through ‘Anna Karenina’ was a two-week journey through the human kaleidoscope of love and suffering, while the brief weekend it took to absorb ‘A Hero of our Time’ was like a torrid love affair, which, like its protagonist, shone bright and brief.

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UDINE 2013: National Security (남영동1985, 2012)

Part of MKC's coverage of the 15th Udine Far East Film Festival.

Corruption, injustice and terror have always been a sad reality of politics. Over the years, many filmmakers have gone to great lengths (sometimes even putting their lives in peril) in a bid to give a voice to the victims of political malfeasance and to shed light on the frequently covered-up truths within the halls of power. Notable examples include Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Costa-Gavras’ Z (1969). Among the pantheon of political works it is true that those that endure are the ones that shock; works that can elicit an audible gasp from audience members. However, a filmmaker must be careful not to go too far and should also pay due consideration to narrative and filmic requirements when presenting a politically charged narrative on screen.

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Fribourg 2013: National Security (남영동1985, Namyeong-dong 1985) 2012

Playing at the 27th Fribourg International Film Festival (March 16-23, 2013)

Corruption, injustice and terror have always been a sad reality of politics. Over the years, many filmmakers have gone to great lengths (sometimes even putting their lives in peril) in a bid to give a voice to the victims of political malfeasance and to shed light on the frequently covered-up truths within the halls of power. Notable examples include Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers (1966) and Costa-Gavras’ Z (1969). Among the pantheon of political works it is true that those that endure are the ones that shock; works that can elicit an audible gasp from audience members. However, a filmmaker must be careful not to go too far and should also pay due consideration to narrative and filmic requirements when presenting a politically charged narrative on screen.

Chung Ji-young made a big comeback following a 13-year absence this time last year when Unbowed debuted at the 16^th edition of the Busan Film Festival. Hot on its heels and proving that it wasn’t a fluke, he has returned with a searing indictment of the brutal Chun Doo-hwan administration that terrorized Korea for the better part of the 1980s.

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Berlinale 2013: Pluto (명왕성, Myeongwangsong) 2012

One of the ten Korean films screening at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.

Film festivals can be a great place to catch up with big films from established luminaries of world cinema but for the ardent cinephile, the most exciting thing is to make a fresh discovery. With patience and some discerning selecting, you will almost always come away with a few pleasant surprises but, while it is wonderful to stumble upon an accomplished debut or sophomore films from emerging talents in the field, every so often you will see something that gives you a special feeling. It is an unmistakable sense of being part of something new and exciting, in the presence of an artist with raw talent, effortless ability and an intuitive understanding of film. These spine-tingling moments don’t happen at every festival but when they do it makes all the searching worthwhile.

Shin Su-won’s second feature Pluto gave me this feeling. However, before singing too much of its praises, I should say that it is a flawed work. More than the film itself, it is the potential of the director that gave me goosebumps. Without a doubt, Shin is about to be a major player in Korean cinema and could well become a force on the international scene before long.

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Berlinale 2013: Behind the Camera (뒷담화, 감독이 미쳤어요, Dwitdamhwa, Gamdokyi Micheotseoyo) 2012

One of the ten Korean films screening at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.

E J-yong’s new feature Behind the Camera is a follow-up to his popular mockumentary Actresses (2009), which featured famous stars playing themselves as they took part in a Vogue shoot. That film poked fun at Korea’s entertainment industry and its willing participants were not scared to send themselves up on screen. Many of the same stars return here and are joined by numerous others, but this time E takes his game one step further as he includes himself as the main protagonist.

The conceit is simple: E J-yong is making a short film but there’s a catch, he’s directing it from Los Angeles via Skype. Things get more complicated as the film he is shooting concerns a filmmaker directing a film from overseas via skype.

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Berlinale 2013: Fatal (가시꽃) 2012

One of the ten Korean films screening at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.

Fragile and ephemeral, life is a series of moments, of complicated and random connections that constitute the fabric of our character. Each decision we make affects our path irrevocably: our actions may not always be consequential but they are nonetheless inerasable. Like a thin sheet of glass, our lives can shatter in an instant. The briefest moment can reveal our brittle fragility.

Fatal, a New Currents section debut feature from Lee Donku, begins with a life-altering moment for five people. A young woman has been drugged and raped by a gang of high school students, though one of them is an unwilling participant bullied into performing an act that will torment him for the rest of his life. Ten years later, this now 28-year-old man works for a low-rent clothes manufacturer. An encounter with a Christian group of missionaries on the street prompts him to seek some kind of salvation through religion but when he joins the group he discovers that one of his new colleagues is the woman that he and his friends raped a decade prior.

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BIFF 2012: Tumbleweed (창수, Chang-su) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

The gangster film, a genre that has found its way into just about every national film industry on the planet, is no stranger to Korean cinema. While the country has produced its fair share of compelling gangland sagas, stretching from the 1997 trio of Beat, No . 3, and Green Fish to more glossy and baroque undertakings such as A Dirty Carnival (2006) and this year’s Nameless Gangster, some of the most memorable films have been those that have been filtered through the prism of Korea’s filmmaking mainstay, the melodrama. Romance and gangsters have been combined to great effect in films such as Kim Jee-woon’s A Bittersweet Life (2005) but some of the most surprising examples have featured criminals at the bottom end of the pecking order.

Song Sae-heun’s Failan (2001) featured Choi Min-sik as a hapless thug who develops feelings for his shame immigrant wife (Cecilia Chung) following her death. The film did away with the gloss and style we often associate with gangster films and instead focused on a bizarre relationship which in many ways acted as a path of redemption for Choi’s character. Similarly, Yang Ik-june’s Breathless (2009) followed a gruff and violent money collector in a rundown neighborhood who develops an odd friendship with a high school girl (played by Kim Kkottbi) that could become his salvation.

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BIFF 2012 Interview: Stepping Behind the Lens - Yu Ji-tae Discusses His New Career Path

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

One of Korea's most recognizable faces, actor Yu Ji-tae has been at the forefront of the Korean film industry since its renaissance in the late 1990s. He first made a splash in Kim Sang-jin's anarchic Attack the Gas Station (1999). Following his romantic roles in Ditto (2000) and Hur Jin-ho's One Fine Spring Day, Yu switched gears to play the villain in Park Chan-wook's seminal Oldboy (2003), elevating his visibility to a global level along the way.

Though still an active actor, over the last few years Yu has also forged a path for himself as a short filmmaker. At this year's Busan International Film Festival he finally unveiled his acclaimed debut feature Mai Ratima. He kindly took some time out of his busy schedule to talk with MKC about his new role behind the camera and the state of independent filmmaking in Korea.

And yes, he is quite tall...

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BIFF 2012: El Condor Pasa (콘돌은 날아간다, Kondoleun Nalaganda) 2012

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

A regular staple at the Busan Film Festival, Jeon Soo-il is a local filmmaker whose body of work has steadily brought him acclaim and accolades from around the world. He is not as famous as some of the more prominent arthouse Korean filmmakers but nonetheless he is an important figure from Korea’s independent film scene.

Now on his seventh feature, Jeon Soo-il’s style, which has always been unique but malleable, has of late, become more concrete. Last year’s Pink (also a Busan Film Festival selection) was a small breakthrough for him, earning him more recognition than his previous works. Though not an easy film (none of his works are), Pink was much more accessible, due in large part to the careful and gorgeous visual aesthetic through which he carved his narrative. With its muted, earthy color palette, and deliberate compositions, which emphasized the distance between the story’s various protagonists, his film, despite its frequent silences and stillness, teemed with life.

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BIFF 2012 Interview: A Chat With Fatal's First-time Director Lee Donku

Part of MKC's coverage of the 17th Busan International Film Festival.

One of the most talked-about films this year at the Busan International Film Festival was the low-budget debute feature Fatal, which screened as part of the event's signature 'New Currents' competition. A section reserved for first or sophomore features from Asian filmmakers which has discovered such respected works as The Journals of Musan (2011) and Bleak Night (2011).

Fatal's Lee Donku took some time out of his busy festival schedule to sit down and talk with Modern Korean Cinema.

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WKR: LKFF, More BIFF and In Another Country's US Bow (11/03-11/09, 2012)

Reviews are still trickling in from Busan along with a wealth content from the currently underway London Korean Film Festival. Also of note is the release of In Another Country in the US

UPCOMING FILMS

Azooma

(Film Business Asia, November 7, 2012)

Behind the Camera

(Variety, November 5, 2012)

Fatal

(Film Business Asia, November 8, 2012)

Let Me Out

(Variety, November 3, 2012)

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WKR: Im Kwon-taek London Retro and More From Busan (10/27-11/02, 2012)

Though it ended almost three weeks ago, the pace of reviews coming in from this year's Busan International Film Festival has yet to let up. Additionally, a comprehensive Im Kwon-taek retrospective is currently taking place in London with Eastern Kicks leading the charge on the review front.

UPCOMING FILMS

Don't Cry Mommy

(Variety, October 29, 2012)

El Condor Pasa

(Film Business Asia, October 28, 2012)

Juvenile Offender

(The Hollywood Reporter, October 31, 2012)

Pluto

(Film Business Asia, October 29, 2012)

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