Korean

Quote:
Director Lee Kwangmo took 10 years to complete Spring in My Hometown, a movie dealing with the Korean War period. The main plot is the life of a boy named Sungmin and his view of adults trying to continue life with what is remains after the Korean War. Rather than dealing with the historic facts of the Korean War itself, this movie depicts the emotions of the post-war generation during that time. Thus, the movie views the historic tragedy in a very contemplative, nostalgic way. The movie’s beautiful images explain why those days that everyone remembers as miserable, were in fact beautiful. Rather than a memory of the Korean War, Spring in My Hometown indirectly reflects the war through the memories of the post-war generation. Other Korean War movies opt to directly show painful experiences and suffering associated with the bloody conflict; in contrast, Spring in My Hometown shows the emotional side of this painful period through the filter of experience that is in the past. In that sense, this movie deals with history yet is not historic because the experience of the Korean War and its aftermath is still an ongoing situation. (Korean Film Archive)Read More »

Gi Ju-bong (Right Now Wrong Then) plays a taciturn, lonely widower with a secret or two. Mo Geum-san’s provincial life seems orderly and governed by routine: undemanding days in his small barber-shop, daily visits to the local swimming pool for his fitness, a drink and a snack on the way home and nights spent wrestling with a pillow that’s too lumpy. Mr Mo’s first secret is that he’s semi-estranged from his son, a student in Seoul; some bad news from a doctor makes him want to reconnect. His second secret is that beneath his placid and slightly dour exterior, a Chaplin-esque slapstick comedian is struggling to get out.Read More »

A middle-aged couple visit a temple, where they had spent their first night together thirty years previously. On their way back, the woman realises she has likely left her phone there and insists on recovering it. This begins the winter’s night, one plunged in the shared, or separate, past of what forms the heart of a couple. At the beginning of the film, the subject’s triviality is conveyed by a rather naturalistic treatment, but this only serves to subsequently produce a stronger twist and gently shift the film towards a starker viewpoint that reveals the underpinnings of love’s discourse, and its memory. The subtle undramatic acting intentionally clouds the rules of the sentimental game, never far from breaking the ice. Bodies, emotions and memories, outside the traditional patterns of attraction and repulsion, are now on an equal footing on the threshold of this winter temple-turned-stage.Read More »

Kwon (Seo Young-hwa) returns to Seoul from a restorative stay in the mountains. She is given a packet of letters left by Mori (Ryo Kase), who has come back from Japan to propose to her. As she walks down a flight of stairs, Kwon drops and scatters the letters, all of which are undated. When she reads them, she has to make sense of the chronology… and so must we. Alternately funny and haunting, Hill of Freedom is a series of disordered scenes based on the letters, echoing the cultural dislocation felt by Mori as he tries to make himself understood in halting English. At what point did he drink himself into a lonely stupor? Did he sleep with the waitress from the “Hill of Freedom” café (Moon So-ri) before or after he despaired of seeing Kwon again?Read More »

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While her husband is on a business trip, Gamhee meets three of her friends on the outskirts of Seoul. They make friendly conversation, as always, but there are different currents flowing independently of each other, both above and below the surface.Read More »

Plot:
A conscious exploration of fantasy and flesh. The director talks about the novel upon which the film is based, we see the crew at work, the actors talk about what’s going on. Y, a schoolgirl of 18, chooses her first lover (rather than wait to be raped, as were her two older sisters). After phone sex with J, a sculptor who’s 38, they begin an affair that, by the second meeting, includes spankings as foreplay. J brings a suitcase full of rods, hoses, and wires; Y gathers sticks to bring. Y’s brother discovers the affair. J’s wife, studying in Paris, calls him to join her. Will the lovers part? Will the violence get out of hand? When do the lies begin?Read More »

The story of two outlaws and a bounty hunter in 1940s Manchuria and their rivalry to possess a treasure map while being pursued by the Japanese army and Chinese bandits.Read More »

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Six years after leaving the secular life to become a Buddhist monk, Beob-wun is still haunted by memories Young-ju, his ex-lover. He tries to find the path to the truth and meets Ji-san another monk who doesn’t even have his holy orders. Their association leads to greater pain and conflicts for Beob-wun. Ji-san dies in the snow, as partly a man resembling Buddha and a man drowning in the ways of the secular world. Beob-wun cremates Ji-san’s corpse and seeks out Young-ju and his mom. He also meets Ok-sun, a woman Ji-san could not forget. These encounters reinforce his belief that the ways of the world are meaningless and continues on his path to find the truth.Read More »

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A dark old house that holds its secrets close. Two sisters tormented by an evil stepmother and clinging to one another for comfort while their aloof, ineffectual father hides in his work and tries to ignore the mounting tension in his household. The onset of puberty, the first spilling of menstrual blood, is marked by terrifying visitations. If, as A Tale of Two Sisters unfolds, you’re put in mind of a fairy tale—albeit by way of Angela Carter or Tanith Lee—you wouldn’t be wrong; the story is in part based on a Korean folk tale that’s made it to film several times before in that country.Read More »