Fribourg 2013: Your Time Is Up (누구나 제 명에 죽고 싶다, Nuguna Je Myeonge Juggosipda) 2012

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

I discussed the Korean Academy of Film Arts, or more precisely their graduation feature projects, for my recent piece on When Winter Screams, a film I enjoyed with some reservations. Now it’s time to take a look at the other major 2012 KAFA production. Your Time Is Up has had a more successful festival run so far, largely because it was programmed alongside Lee Don-ku’s excellent Fatal during last October’s Busan International Film Festival in the New Currents section. Due to the exposure afforded by that selection, this KAFA project has found itself competing with Jang Kun-jae’s Sleepless Night and about a dozen other films during this month’s Fribourg International Film Festival.

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Fribourg 2013: Meaningful Stillness in Jang Kun-jae's Sleepless Night (2012)

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

Of late, Korean Cinema has made for rather bleak viewing. Hushed up sexual violence has been very prevalent but politics, torture and much else besides have also found their way into these recent narratives. For this reason, among many others, I am particularly grateful for Jang Kun-jae's magnificent sophomore feature Sleepless Night. His new film, though not without its portrayal of injustice and hardship, is a film about happiness, or at least one loving couple's pursuit of it in modern day Seoul.

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Between Memory and Awareness: Jiseul (지슬) 2012

(by Fabien Schneider)

MKC is co-presenting Jiseul as part of this year's CAAMFest. Film screens on March 15th & 19th. Click here for more details.

Film watched at the 19th Vesoul International Film Festival of Asian Cinema

As soon as the moving silhouettes detaching themselves from the ambient darkness begin to raise their voices, the fire that provided their scant comfort peters out. Suddenly, all of them realize that they are now trapped in the black under a few meters of rock. They do not know how many days they have lurked there like hibernating animals, but one thing is certain, they still need to wait one more day. And then another. Who knows when this nightmare will come to an end? With little historical context, the young director O Muel ruthlessly immerses us into one of the darkest episodes of the Cold War. One that is seldom documented in South Korea, and that the U.S. has preferred to ignore. With a careful, solemn aesthetic, the director tackles the process of remembrance, one equal to that of the dramatic event. Though it will surely be appreciated by the local population as the outlet that they expected for so long, the film remains too hermetic to allow a foreign audience to understand the true value of its drama. Spectators have to make due with a simple introductory text, insufficient and somewhat dubious from a historical perspective.

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BIFF 2012: Perfect Number (용의자X, Yong-eui-ja-X) 2012

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

I originally saw Bang Eun-jin’s sophomore film Perfect Number at the Busan International Film Festival last October. I am a big fan of the Japanese book (‘The Devotion of Suspect X’ by Keigo Hegashino) that it was based on and as I felt that the story would be a great fit for Korean cinema my expectations were very high. Too high it seems as I found myself a little disappointed by a film delivering something I wasn’t expecting.

A reclusive math teacher is smitten with his next-door neighbor who lives with her niece. One day her ex-husband comes to visit and a violent altercation ends with his lifeless corpse hitting the ground. The teacher has heard what transpired and knocks on their door. Quiet, composed and intelligent, he offers to help his distressed neighbors.

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Divorce, Korean Style: All About My Wife (내 아내의 모든 것, Nae Anaeui Modeun Geot) 2012

(by Rex Baylon)

There used to be a time when America was known as a manufacturing giant. In agriculture, electronics, and automobile design America seemed not to have any contenders. With regards to film, Hollywood was the first and last word when it came to cinema. Even as the US began its slow decline, the soft power of American cinema never seemed to waver even through all the social upheaval of the twentieth century; while presidents came and went, one hit wonders rose and fell, and wars were won or lost, Hollywood never lost its luster in the eyes of foreign and domestic audiences.

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Dirty Blood (나쁜 피, Nah-beun pi) 2012

As a society Korea has been slow to change despite its economic growth. At times it can seem like a gigantic, perpetually simmering pot of discontent that seems dangerously close to boiling over. One aspect of Korean society that is often brushed under the carpet is repressed sexuality and while it isn’t something you will encounter much in TV dramas, music and the news, the Korean film industry, of late, has been vocal in its depiction of the widespread abuse that rages through the country. Truth be told, it is often used opportunistically and many of the works in question tread a very fine line.

Dirty Blood is one such film that exists in dangerous territory. While other 2012 features that examined sex crimes in an aggressive fashion, such as Don’t Cry Mommy and Azooma, did so in a relatively black and white fashion. Director Kang Hyo-jin opts to operate in a grey area, much like Lee Don-ku did with his incendiary debut Fatal, also last year.

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The Ultimate Revenge Narrative: 26 Years (26년, 26-nyeon) 2012

Just like anyone else, I come from a country (Ireland) with historical scars that refuse to completely fade away. The sad fact is that these days my connection with my home is tenuous at best. Nevertheless, as we approach the centenary following the Easter Rising of 1916, this terrible event that saw a group a passionate Irishman stand up to their English oppressors, only to be brutally suppressed, is still an indelible part of who I am.

My grandmother (who recently died aged 100) was only four when it happened. It should be ancient history for me: a bygone event that took place in a country I didn't spend much of my youth in and that I don’t easily identify with. Yet somehow, I feel a sense of solidarity with those young men (and a few women) who stood up to an unvanquishable foe in the name of what they felt was right.

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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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Grape Candy (청포도 사탕, Chungpodo Satang) 2012

(by Rex Baylon)

Although it’s often seen as two different conditions, a fear of loneliness and an awareness of one’s mortality, in retrospect, are two sides of the same coin. In between birth and death we all struggle with defining ourselves and giving meaning to our lives. In Kim Hee-Jeong’s sophomore feature, Grape Candy (2012), that inner conflict is played out as a drama between three women, two adults and the third a girl perpetually frozen by death as a junior high student.

The first woman we meet, Sun-Joo, played by Park Jin-Hee, is the perennial girl who seems to have everything but actually has a secret that keeps her at arms length from everyone around her. Her nice job at the bank, charming fiancée, and comfortable life keep her distracted enough to not have to deal with her emotionally desiccated heart until an old classmate So-ra (Park Ji-Yoon) reappears in her life. Working alongside Sun-Joo’s fiancée Ji-Hoon (Choi Won-Young) to complete a new book, the film at first seems to be about a love triangle with So-ra and Sun-Joo competing for Ji-Hoon’s attention. But as quickly as that plot thread is introduced it is soon dropped and we get a series of mysterious scenes of Sun-Joo looking forlorn, So-ra rocking out to music, a woman in a bookstore who refuses to take the phone whenever So-ra calls, and most mysterious of all a flashback to three junior high girls outside, each with an expression of terror on their faces.

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Berlinale 2013: White Night (백야, Baekya) 2012

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

South Korea’s rapid development over the past 20 years has been nothing short of an economic miracle but, though there’s no denying how far it’s come, not every element of society has progressed at the same breakneck pace. Various elements, particularly as they relate to social change, have stubbornly lagged behind. One such facet is the acceptance of homosexuality. As gay marriage is slowly becoming a part of daily life in various countries in the western world, gay rights are progressing haltingly in Korea. Given the nation’s advances in other areas, this, along with other social problems, seems a little incongruous when compared with the modern image projected through the nation’s media.

Through the prism of a highly developed film industry such as Korea’s, this divide seems that much more vivid. LeeSong Hee-il, Korea’s first openly gay filmmaker, has been busily working away on short films for quite some time but earlier this year he finally unveiled his sophomore feature White Night at the Jeonju International Film Festival, coming six years after his very well-received debut No Regrets. 

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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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A Taste for Blood and Money: Traffickers (공모자들, Kongmojadeul) 2012

As a young cinephile and crime fiction fanatic there was a smorgasbord of noir-tinged goodies for a kid growing up in the Nineties to watch, rewatch, and obsessively pore over. Vice, scandal and pulp theatrics were alive and well during an era when Tarantino’s jigsaw narratives, John Dahl’s nihilistic seductresses, Scorsese’s late-era gangster sagas, and the budding humanist crime dramas of Paul Thomas Anderson were playing on the big-screen while paranoid Grand Guignol dramas like the X-Files were simultaneously playing on network television. Of course, no film embodied all the tropes and failures of the crime thriller in that decade quite like Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995).

Billed as a post-modern crime caper, the popularity of Singer’s film rode on the back of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction which was released a year earlier and also employed an atypical plot structure. Of course, what has kept the film from being forgotten is its iconic twist ending. A double whammy revealing to the police detective interrogating the film’s narrator and our guide that the entire story we were just fed was a lie, an unoriginal trope in foreign and arthouse cinema but a relatively enervating gimmick to a young cine-educated audience raised on cable television and VHS tapes. A few years later another director, M. Night Shyamalan, would utilize the twist ending as a personal signature to all his films starting with the supernatural thriller The Sixth Sense (1999) and by the mid-aughts the trope became a well-worn and overused cliché.

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A Gothic Fantasy: A Werewolf Boy (늑대소년, Neukdae Sonyeon) 2012

(by Rex Baylon)

Of all the film cultures in the world that embrace the ideals of romantic love it is only in South Korea where the connection between the ghosts of the past, the shifting of the seasons, and the tragic melodramatic love story can exist and thrive. While the French may have their amour fou, the Italians and Spanish their unbridled passion, and the Americans their once witty rom-coms South Korea has, for over a decade now, been cornering the market on never-can-be romances. If one were to retrace the genesis of this popular genre you wouldn’t need to go further back than 2002 with the broadcast of Winter Sonata on television screens all over the peninsula. Part of the Endless Love quadrilogy of stories that charted the ups and downs of a couple who meet in adolescence, were separated by some uncontrollable force, reunited later in adulthood, and then depending on the whims of nature and the show’s producer would either come back together again or be painfully ripped apart from one another.

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Padak (파닥파닥, Padak Padak) 2012

(by Rex Baylon)

Although the United States and Japan have a far more illustrious history when it comes to producing animated features, South Korea has been the industry’s worst kept secret for many decades. At first, merely an outsource center for foreign filmmakers who needed a platoon of talented but cheap inkers and illustrators, this long overshadowed country has in the past few years emerged as a real contender within the animation field. And even though Korea hasn’t produced an animation studio with a ready-made and recognizable style like Pixar in America or Ghibli in Japan this situation has allowed many young animators to forge ahead and create their own unique works, regardless of global economic interests.

In 2011 alone, Yeun Sang-ho’s bleak revenge drama King of Pigs and popular children’s picture Leafie, A Hen into the Wild were released and both attained a level of unexpected success. The former as a searing indictment of school bullying became a critical darling on the festival circuit while the latter became South Korea’s most financially successful animated feature, raking in 2.2 million ticket sales. Unlike the American and Japanese markets that produce content to be exported and exploited by foreign interests these two films were created primarily for Korean audiences with no real expectations that they could travel outside their country of origin. And though a lot of the domestic output by Korean animators is influenced a great deal by the West and Japan their work does have an indelible personal stamp to it. Thus the quality of the animation being released is not only equal to those produced in America or Asia but the films themselves are still inarguably Korean.

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A Company Man (회사원, Huisawon) 2012

(By Rex Baylon)

There is no archetype in film that is more hip than the lone hitman. From a laconic Alan Ladd in This Gun For Hire (1942) to the Gallic cool of Alain Delon in Le Samourai (1967) or the neurotic hipster played by Jean Reno in Leon: The Professional (1994), cinema has helped to elevate the occupation of murderer into not merely a tragic figure, as gangsters have been, but as something akin to warrior poets. Becoming a hitman, cinematically speaking, means more than just donning on the right costume and learning how to aim a gun though. The hitman figure in films must adopt a philosophy and lifestyle that is wholly alien to the average moviegoer but would not be all that unusual to an Ancient Spartan or Samurai in the Tokugawa era. To live as a hitman means ultimately to be intimate with death in all its forms.

Of course, with all that said there is a certain level of ludicrousness to the whole mythology of the hitman. First of all, to be in such an isolated state for such a prolonged period of time does not breed calm collected assassins but rather emotionally unstable psychopaths; people are social creatures and thus self-imposed social isolation goes against the grain of human nature. And then of course, there is the obvious fact that hitmen are the equivalent of ghosts; whether they succeed or fail, live or die, their personality is subsumed by the identity that they have taken upon themselves to adopt. To be a hitman means giving up not just your identity but also your humanity.

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Top 10 Korean Films of 2012

2013 has just gotten underway and what better way for MKC to ring in the new year than to reflect on what has simply been a gargantuan year for Korean cinema. The vaunted 10 million admissions club welcomed two new members as The Thieves and Masquerade rode their way into the top three of the all time Korean box office chart. Indeed commercial cinema across the board enjoyed spectacular success as well over 100 million tickets were sold to domestic films at the Korean box office, a first for the industry. As of this writing seven films have crossed 4 million admissions (with an eighth on the way in the form of The Tower). What's more Kim Ki-duk became the first Korean filmmaker to prevail at one of the big three European film festivals as he took home the Golden Lion from Venice for his 18th feature Pieta. Elsewhere on the festival circuit a flurry of Korean films took home big awards, including Juvenile Offender, Barbie, The Weight, Circle Line, and many more.

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The Tower (타워, Taweo) 2012

Following the biggest ever year for Korean cinema, it is perhaps fitting that the very last work to be released in 2012 was a spectacle-driven disaster film highlighting the industry’s technical proficiency. Likened to previous blockbuster failures such as Sector 7 (2011), My Way (2011) and this year’s R2B: Return to Base, there was a danger that The Tower could have made for a sour note to conclude Korean cinema’s fortuitous year. Any such qualms were quickly dispelled however as the film registered the industry’s all time second-biggest opening day and is well on its way to an enormous finish.

It’s Christmas Eve and the brand new Tower Sky complex, a brilliant pair of skyscrapers soaring over Seoul’s skyline, is busily preparing for its glitzy holiday party. During the festivities, a helicopter dropping artificial snow crashes into the building and ignites a fierce blaze, threatening the lives of hundreds. Now, a building technician, his daughter, a restaurant manager and a legendary firefighter must brave the flames.

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KBO: The Tower Rises to First in Powerful Xmas Weekend (12/28-12/30, 2013)

The Tower Rises to First in Powerful Xmas Weekend

	Title	Release Date	Market Share	Weekend	Total	Screens
1	Tower	12/25/12	30.70%	873,155	1,694,650	617
2	Les Miserables (uk/us)	12/19/12	26.70%	751,684	2,955,910	621
3	Love 911	12/19/12	13.00%	370,787	1,596,902	427
4	The Hobbit (us)	12/13/12	8.40%	204,958	2,533,231	383
5	Marrying the Mafia 5	12/19/12	5.00%	144,316	961,275	338
6	Wreck-It Ralph (us)	12/13/12	3.90%	113,083	570,142	320
7	Niko 2: Little Brother (de)	12/25/12	3.20%	95,513	207,057	284
8	Zambezi (us)	12/25/12	3.00%	86,922	205,150	273
9	My P.S. Partner	12/6/12	2.20%	57,345	1,767,310	157
10	Pokemon (jp)	12/19/12	0.70%	38,781	316,515	164

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500 Articles + Holiday Posting Schedule

Xmas at MKC's HQ ;)

I hope everyone's been enjoying the holidays and as 2012 winds down I just wanted to let you know what to expect on the site during the festivities.

We'll be taking a break on regular posting until shortly after New Year's but in the meantime you can expect some end-of-year wrap-ups such as the year's Top 10 films and news stories. Perhaps even a brief post of my time in Korea six months in to make up for slacking off on the 'Korea Blog' posts.

Remarkably this is the 500th post to appear on MKC so along with season's greetings I'd also like to extend my sincere thanks for allowing the site the grow and continue for so long. With new contributors and more plans for 2013, there's also plenty more to come.

Here's to the next 500!