South Korean Cinema

Thursday, January 10, 8pm
Bad Guy
(Kim Ki-Duk, 2001, South Korea, 100 minutes, 35mm)
While strutting through downtown Seoul, gangland pimp Han-Gi spots Sun-Hwa, a pretty, middle-class college student, alone on a park bench. He grabs her and forcefully kisses her, even while being beaten by bystanders. Here begins Han-Gi’s obsessive mission to possess this woman by forcing her into the dark world of prostitution. With striking direction, Kim Ki-Duk transcends the conventions of traditional narrative in this surreal, fantasy-fueled clash.

Thursday, January 17, 8pm
The Host
(Joon-ho Bong, 2006, South Korea, 119 minutes, 35mm)
In the long tradition of metropolis-terrorizing monsters, a mysterious creature emerges from the Han River to torment Seoul, the result of an American laboratory that’s dumped chemicals into the water. After the creature captures a young girl, her misfit family, part of a fantastic ensemble cast, sets out to save her and destroy the monster. The highest grossing South Korean film ever, The Host is by turns terrifying thriller, anti-American satire, and slapstick comedy, and it entertains on all levels.

Thursday, January 24, 8pm
Sopyonje    
(Im Kwon-Taek, 1993, South Korea, 112 minutes, 35mm)
Im Kwon-Taek explores his fascination with pansori, a genre of Korean traditional folk music, in this masterpiece. The film’s about a family of pansori singers struggling to make a living in the 1940s and in the decades thereafter, a time when many aspects of Korean culture came under siege from Japanese and Western influences. The film, mirroring its own storyline of pansori, represents the struggle to maintain an essential “Koreanness” during the rush of modernity and globalization. Perhaps not coincidentally, it broke box-office records in Korea for a Korean film.

Thursday, January 31, 8pm
Address Unknown
(Kim Ki-Duk, 2001, South Korea, 117 minutes, 35mm)
Director Kim Ki-Duk’s bleak tragedy explores the legacy of an American military base in the South Korean countryside. Kim expertly weaves together the stories of many characters — a horribly disfigured girl, an abandoned wife of an American soldier, an American army recruit coping with a relentlessly foreign environment — all searching for a happy ending that does not exist. Their desperate pleas for love and redemption are returned stamped in red, with “Address Unknown.”

Thursday, February 7, 8pm
Take Care of My Cat
(Jeong Jae-Eun, 2001, South Korea, 112 minutes, 35mm)
Jeong Jae-Eun's coming-of-age story Take Care of My Cat compassionately addresses the difficulties women in South Korea face as they search for their own identities. Melancholy and lush in a way that's reminiscent of the style of Sofia Coppola, Take Care of My Cat is a breakout Korean film, and unlike Coppola, Jae-Eun doesn't focus only on the drama of girls living a pampered life: this ostensibly modest film has a panoramic scope of Korean women from all economic and social backgrounds.

Thursday, February 14, 8pm
Oasis 
(Chang-Dong Lee, 2002, South Korea, 132 minutes, 35mm)
After serving several years in prison for involuntary manslaughter, Jong-Du, a mentally ill young man, calls on the family of his victim. They send him away, but not before he falls for their daughter, a young woman severely disabled by cerebral palsy. Lee Chang-Dong, a Korean New Wave filmmaker who recently served as South Korea’s minister of culture and tourism, crafts an edgy, heartbreaking depiction of an unlikely romance between two people ostracized from family and society. Featuring a stunning performance by Moon So-Ri, who won the Marcello Mastroianni award for best actress at the Venice Film Festival.   

Thursday, February 21, 8pm
Woman is the Future of Man    
(Hong Sang-Soo, 2004, South Korea, 88 minutes, 35mm)
Heon-Jun has just returned to Korea from the United States, hoping to make it in the film industry. He runs into an old friend, Mun-Ho, who is now an art professor. Over dinner, the pair reminisce about their past and discuss Seon-Hwa, a woman they both dated in college. They hunt down Seon-Hwa, but when they find the former artist is now a bar manager, they slowly realize that she is not the same person they once knew–that sometimes the past is better left to memory. A challenging, unstable film, Hong Sang-Soo’s character study is also a critique of Korean men’s attitudes toward women.

Thursday, February 28 , 8pm
Memories of a Murder
(Bong Joon-ho, 2003, South Korean, 132 minutes, 35mm)
Two rural police officers are assigned to their first big case: finding Korea’s first serial killer. Without the benefit of “big-city” forensic methods, the rural cops have their own ways of extracting confessions — like beating them out of the accused, which means that everyone confesses — but when a city cop is assigned to the case, how to find the killer becomes more important than actually finding him. A black comedy loosely based on actual events, Memories of Murder is an off-center, keenly observant police procedural that was a huge hit in South Korea.   

Thursday, March 6, 8pm
The President's Last Bang
(Im Sang-Soo, 2005, South Korea, 102 minutes, 35mm)
A hit on the international festival circuit, The President's Last Bang confronts Korean history and politics with bleak, sometimes grotesque satire. An agitated director of Korean intelligence plots to kill the president, but his carefully designed scheme completely unravels. From a jammed gun to an absurdly escalating body count, Im Sang-Soo turns farce into an outrageous indictment of Korean politicians. In 2005, a South Korean court ruled that four minutes of documentary footage of the assassination of a former Korean president had to be removed from The President’s Last Bang. Im Sang-Soo replaced the footage with a silent black screen.

Thursday, March 13, 8pm
Woman on the Beach
(Hong Sang-Soo, 2006, South Korea, 100 minutes, 35mm)
Film director Joong-Rae travels to the seaside town of Shinduri with his production designer, Chang-Wook, in order to finish his overdue screenplay. When Chang-Wook brings his beautiful crush, composer Moon-Sook, she and Joong-Rae hit it off — maybe. Reminiscent of Eric Rohmer’s work, Hong Sang-Soo’s wittiest film yet is about the clumsy indecisions of new romance.