Close Up

1 - 5 November 2017: London Korean Film Festival 2017

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The London Korean Film festival presents two programmes of as part of their classic and independent film strands, with retrospectives on Bae Chang-ho and Jung Yoon-suk.


Programme 1: Bae Chang-ho

“No single South Korean director is more identified with a given decade than Bae Chang-ho with the 1980s. He began the decade as assistant director to the great Lee Jang-ho, the focus of our ‘classics’ retrospective at LKFF 2016; he ended it as the most popular film artist of the era, more successful even than his mentor. Key to his career were his own huge resources of determination and passion for cinema, but also the contributions of other people. Lee Jang-ho was one: he had no qualms about sharing the talents of his close friend and top screenwriter, Choi In-ho, or the acting skills of his most famous star, Ahn Sung-ki. Through the years of the decade, the troika of Bae/Choi/Ahn attached to any film project usually guaranteed financial and critical success.” – Mark Morris

People in the Slum
Bae Chang-ho
1982 | 108 min | Colour | DCP
Introduced by Mark Morris + Q&A with the Director

A shantytown miles south of Seoul has collected poor people and misfits from all over the country into its twisting alleyways and scruffy landscape. Myeong-suk, a fading beauty among the tough women there, is known as “black glove” for the one on her hand badly burnt in saving her baby boy. Myeong-suk tries to raise her son, keep one step ahead of her dodgy husband and run a small grocery shop. But her ex-husband is out of jail, again, and drives his nice green taxi cab right back into her already complicated life. read more

Whale Hunting
Bae Chang-ho
1984 | 112 min | Colour | 35mm
Introduced by Mark Morris + Q&A with the Director

Byeong-tae can’t do anything right. Physically weak, disastrous as a student, scorned several times over by the girl he fancies, he almost ends up in jail. To his rescue comes the “professional beggar” Min-wu. The older man drags him off to a brothel where the innocent Chun-ja holds out against her fate. The two men smuggle her away from a brutal boss, and off they travel, by hook and often by crook, through the wintery landscape. They vow to return Chun-ja to her mother down south, but the boss and his henchmen are in pursuit. The best loved of all South Korean road movies. read more

The Dream
Bae Chang-ho
1990 | 93 min | Colour | 35mm
Introduced by Mark Morris + Q&A with the Director

Once upon a time back in the era of the Shilla Dynasty when Buddhism was the religion of peasants and kings, there lived a young monk named Jo-shin. Of all of the temples in all of the kingdom, Dal-lae had to walk into his. Ten years of studying and training melt from him at the sight of the beautiful young woman. Jo-shin manages to have his way with her, then this unlikely couple flee the temple, proper society and Dal-lae’s enraged fiancé. Passion cools, and their lives are soon full of hardships they never imagined. read more


Programme 2: Jung Yoon-suk

Non Fiction Diary
Jung Yoon-suk
2013 | 93 min | Colour & B/W | DCP
Introduced by Tony Rayns + Q&A with the director

Jung Yoon-suk’s brilliant essay-doc uses real-life crimes from the not-so-distant past as the touchstone for a broader interrogation of the Korean body politic. The so-called Jijon Gang were young men in Yeonggwang, a rural backwater with Confucian roots, who killed five people in 1994 – just after Korea’s transition from military to civilian government. They claimed to hate the new consumerism and the rich, but none of their victims were in fact affluent. Exploring the gang’s misogyny, Jung re-examines other disasters of the period – the collapse of the Seongsu Bridge over the Han River and the collapse of the Sampoong Department Store – asking provocative questions about negligence and culpability, "freedom" and social control. read more

The White House in My Country
Jung Yoon-suk
2006 | 23 min | Colour | DigiBeta
Introduced by Tony Rayns + Q&A with the director

The American presence in South Korea dates from the Korean War, but why do so many businesses – especially bars and nightclubs – still have names like "White House" and "Washington"? Studying at the Korean National University of the Arts, Jung took his camera out onto the streets to find out. read more

Hochiminh
Jung Yoon-suk
2007 | 5 min | Colour | Digital
Introduced by Tony Rayns + Q&A with the director

Made at the Korean National University of Arts, Hochiminh is less a celebration of Vietnam’s revolutionary leader than a tribute to the gravel-voiced veteran rocker Han Daesu. Some of the dynamic visual strategies here look forward to ideas that Jung would take further in Bamseom Pirates. read more

The Home of Stars
Jung Yoon-suk
2010 | 13 min | Colour | Digital
Introduced by Tony Rayns + Q&A with the director

Jung created this knockout collage as an installation in the former Kimusa (Korean CIA) building in Seoul, and this is the film version. It explores the modern history of Korea, from politics to pop culture, from war to uneasy peace, with such intensity and wit that it’ll leave you gasping. read more

Bamseom Pirates Seoul Inferno
Jung Yoon-suk
2017 | 120 min | B/W | DCP
Introduced by Tony Rayns + Q&A with the director

Voted a top favourite in 2017 Rotterdam Film Festival’s audience poll. The Bamseom Pirates (named after an island in the Han River) were a post-punk drum’n’bass duo active for a while in the early 2010s. Most of their performances, some involving non-musical instruments, were at student demos and benefits, and Seoul Inferno was their only album, still available as a free download. The essay-doc starts out as a funny chronicle of what they got up to and the noises they made, eventually turning its attention to the attempted prosecution of the band’s "manager" Park Jung-geun under the National Security Law: accused, absurdly, of "promoting" North Korea. read more


More info: koreanfilm.co.uk