Close Up

8 - 10 November 2016: The Visual Age: Three Films by Lee Chang-ho

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The London Korean Film Festival presents three rarely screened masterpieces by the influential and rebellious filmmaker Lee Chang-ho, co-founder of the Young Sung Shi Dae (Visual Age) group – a collection of like-minded Korean artists who sought to creatively push the boundaries of cinema, following the example set by the British Free Cinema and French Nouvelle Vague movements.

“Forging a tight network of young filmmakers, screenwriters and actors in their 20s and 30s, Young Sang Shi Dae also brought together performers and artists from the theatre and art worlds, creating an unprecedentedly rich cross-pollination among the new generation who would not only witness but participate actively in the profound transformation of Korean cinema and culture after the fall of the military dictatorship. In key films such as his visionary The Man With Three Coffins, Lee embraced a bold mode of free narrative, exploring as much an elusive mood as the haunting theme of dislocation and profound loneliness that informs the best films of the period. Largely unavailable and unseen in the US [and UK], the films of Lee Chang-ho remain difficult to see even in Korea due to complexities of copyright and prints, the vestiges of the upheaval that took place in the film industry in the Seventies and Eighties.” – Harvard Film Archive  

This programme forms the Classics Revisited strand of London Korean Film Festival, as part of which we’re thrilled to welcome Lee Chang-ho to Close-Up to discuss his films.

Good Windy Days
Lee Chang-ho
1980 | 113 min | Colour | 35mm
Followed by Q&A with Lee Chang-ho  

One of Lee's most politically confrontational films, Good Windy Days uses its intertwined narrative of three young men coming of age in 1980s Seoul to cut a pointed cross-section across a society undergoing painful and contradictory transition. Good Windy Days is celebrated as one of the seminal Korean films of the 1980s and an important first expression of the political urgency and artistic sophistication of the Korean New Wave. read more

The Man with Three Coffins
Lee Chang-ho
1987 | 104 min | Colour | 35mm
Followed by Q&A with Lee Chang-ho  

Lee's inimitable masterpiece is a hypnotic trance film and drifting road movie that follows a melancholy widower's journey back into his past as he travels to his dead wife's rural hometown to spread her ashes. Stylistically daring, The Man With Three Coffins uses a floating voice-over and avant-garde montage to evoke, with striking frankness, its anti-hero's sexually charged fears and stinging frustrations. read more

Eoh Wu-dong
Lee Chang-ho
1985 | 110 min | Colour | 35mm  

Taking place amongst the dynastic infighting of the Chonsun dynasty, Lee uses the period film to openly critique political factionalism and the legacy of Confucianism, offering his headstrong and liberated heroine as an emblem of a defiant and individualism and feminism. Euodong's dizzying sexuality imbues its every image with the heady perfume of unleashed desire, bringing an electric intensity to the lush colour scheme and expressionist landscapes. read more

Part of the Classics Revisited strand of the London Korean Film Festival

More info: koreanfilm.co.uk