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2 November 2017: Whale Hunting

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Whale Hunting
Bae Chang-ho
1984 | 112 min | Colour | 35mm
Introduced by Mark Morris followed by 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. Two-guys, usually misfits, and a girl, often a prostitute, wander a snowy landscape: the formula was invented in the mid 1970s in Lee Man-hee’s The Road to Sampo. Bae would use it again but never more movingly.


Part of The London Korean Film Festival 2017