Busan 2014 Review: END OF WINTER Boasts Strong Cast And Subtle Mise-en-scene

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

By Pierce Conran

Dankook University scores a New Currents competition slot at the Busan International Film Festival for the second year running with End of Winter, a controlled family drama taking place in the dead of winter. Eschewing histrionics in favour of a slowburning and sustained narrative, this latest student feature boasts a strong cast and an unobtrusive yet elegant mise-en-scene.

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Busan 2014 Review: WILD FLOWERS Wilts After A Bristling Start

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

By Pierce Conran

The lives of aimless youths at the bottom of the social ladder are the focus of Wild Flowers, a bleak look into teenage destitution in the streets and back alleys of Seoul. Uncompromising in its focus and brisk in its introduction to the sordid realities of a gaggle of bristly girls, Park Suk-young’s debut is a kinetic but unfocused snapshot of wayward youth.

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Busan 2014 Review: DAUGHTER Explores The Ills Of Modern Korean Parenting

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

By Pierce Conran

Following a pair of indulgent films that awkwardly straddled the balance between fantasy and reality, the multi-hyphenate Ku Hye-sun, a well known actress, singer and artist as well as director, returns with Daughter, her most mature work to date.

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Busan 2014 Review: WE WILL BE OK Hits Its Stride Too Late In The Game

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

By Pierce Conran

Writers are told to write about what they know, so it stands to reason that the same rule should apply to filmmakers. As a result, many films take place within the film world and in the Korean industry this proves no exception. Indie debut We Will Be OK highlights the divide between the amateur and professional worlds in Korean film, placing emphasis on the inner anxieties that plague aspiring filmmakers.

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Busan 2014 Review: A MATTER OF INTERPRETATION Is David Lynch Meets Hong Sangsoo

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

By Pierce Conran

Following his terrific debut Romance Joe (2011), Lee Kwang-kuk is back in Busan with A Matter of Interpretation, a breathless play on dream logic with smart plotting and a great script that proves he's no fluke, and then some.

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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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Busan 2014 Review: GIFTED Takes an Interesting Turn Before Veering Off Course

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

By Pierce Conran

Taking its cue from the common social grievances often found in Korean indie dramas, Gifted, the sophomore effort of Poongsan (2011) helmer Jung Jai-hung, examines the friction between unemployment and consumerist ambitions in modern Korea. Slight and familiar, the film doesn't immediately stand out but when its narrative starts to deviate off the standard template, it isn't long before it goes in a surprising direction.

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KOFFIA 2014 Review: THE DINNER Offers Too Many Cold Servings

By Hieu Chau

Creating a compelling domestic family drama is never an easy task mainly due to the stories these films have to tell. The narrative of a family drama is almost never about something new but it definitely takes a certain type of filmmaker to be able to evoke something profound and invigorating out of typically ordinary circumstances. Director Kim Dong-hyun tries his hardest to be that type of filmmaker with his latest family drama, The Dinner, but unfortunately lacks the astute direction and strong scripting that a poised filmmaker such as Japan's Hirokazu Koreeda possesses.

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Berlinale 2014 Review: SPROUT's Short and Sweet Seoul Odyssey

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

By Pierce Conran

A little girl’s trip to the market becomes a charming journey through modern Korea in Yoon Ga-eun’s delightful short film Sprout, which premiered at the Busan International Film Festival last October. Korean indie cinema often makes a point of demonstrating what’s wrong with society while many of the values most prized by citizens are typically found in the nation’s commercial output, albeit through rose-tinted windows. Thus it has been treat to see some younger, low-budget filmmakers explore the positives of their country in recent years. Films like Koala (2012) have not forgotten the realities of the society they inhabit, but they have also placed the good right alongside the bad.

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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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News: HAN GONG-JU Picks Up Yet Another Award in Rotterdam

By Pierce Conran

Following its debut at the Busan International Film Festival last October, Lee Su-jin's film Han Gong-ju has been blazing a trail on the international film festival circuit ever since. It's most recent win came last night at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it picked up the coveted Tiger Award. It is the fifth time a Korean film has picked up the prize in the last 18 years.

After picking up the Citizen Reviewers' and CGV Movie Collage Award in Busan, Lee's film went on to win a minor award at the Seoul Independent Film Festival and the Marrakesh International Film Festival's top prize, the Golden Star, in December. Han Gong-ju also screened at the Palm Springs International Film Festival last month.

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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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Review: The Slick But Baffling Thriller GENOME HAZARD

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

By John A. Riley

Illustrator Taketo (Nishijima Hidetoshi) returns home one evening to find his wife’s dead body. The telephone rings, breaking a tense silence, and Taketo is baffled to hear his wife’s voice on the other end of the line. Before he can even properly process this tragedy, men arrive intent on killing him, and he is drawn rapidly into a conspiratorial web where the only person who he can trust is Korean reporter Ji-won (a wide-eyed, incredulous Kim Hyo-jin) who, sensing a story, is dragged into the labyrinthine plot herself.

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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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Busan 2013 Review: The Devastating Han Gong-ju Is BIFF's Hidden Gem

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

What is it that drives us to the cinema, time and again? What are we looking for when we enter a theater and the lights begin to fade? In answering that question you will often come across the words entertainment and escapism, two similar terms that nevertheless encompass slightly different purviews. However, at its best, cinema goes beyond mere distraction and has the ability to move us deeply. Like a decades-old junkie chasing his first high, I willingly trawl through a throng of films to experience anew the catharsis that cinema has the ability to provoke. A few consensus picks emerge from time to time but there’s nothing quite like being blindsided by something you weren’t expecting.

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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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