The four films included in this year’s Indie Talent section were chosen to provide a glimpse into the kind of stories Korean independent filmmakers are telling in the present day. Whereas many commercial filmmakers have to assess and anticipate the type of stories audiences want to hear, for independent directors the choice of what story to tell often comes from someplace personal. In that sense, there is an intimacy to Korean independent films that distinguishes them from their bigger-budget brethren. These works invite us into the filmmaker’s mind, where we can share his or her concerns. At the same time, taken together these films illustrate various issues that are relevant to society as a whole.
Those concerns range in breadth from the base to the very tip of Maslow’s famous ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. A film like Oh Seong-ho’s Through My Midwinter illustrates a situation that is sadly common among those in their twenties in contemporary Korea: dreams of self-actualization (the top levels of Maslow’s pyramid) and even personal relationships (the middle levels) are threatened when basic economic and physiological needs come under pressure. The film’s sympathetic but clear-eyed portrayal of a struggling young couple has resonated strongly with many viewers. Financial trouble and struggles with debt are widespread in contemporary Korean society, and the waning of the pandemic has done little to alleviate this. Park Song-yeol and Won Hyang-ra’s brilliant Hot in Day, Cold at Night also covers similar subject matter, but adopts a completely different tone, using lacerating humour to depict the lives of a jobless husband and wife who are pushed into making some desperate choices.
Moving up the pyramid, family relationships have been an enduring theme for Korean independent filmmakers over the years, serving as the focus of acclaimed films like The World of Us (2016) and Moving On (2019). The Hill of Secrets by Lee Ji-eun continues this tradition but approaches it from a fresh perspective, considering the tangled threads that bind together family, pride and ambition. A look at the Korean independent films of the past year reveals many examples of stories structured around a parent-child relationship. This is hardly unique to Korean cinema, but it does show how the ways in which families communicate and rely on each other continue to evolve with each subsequent generation.
Kim Mi-young’s A Lonely Island in the Distant Seaalso has a father-daughter relationship at its centre, but it might be more accurate to describe it as the parallel journeys of two people quietly searching for meaning and contentment in life. In many ways this is more about what they choose to give up, than about what they strive to achieve. More broadly, after a decades-long concentration on economic growth, Korean society is more frequently turning to questions related to fulfilment and meaning in daily life. These are questions with no easy answers, but independent films like this one are opening up new conversations, and telling stories that the mainstream industry may have overlooked.
We lead growing proportions of our lives online, and this is even more true for young people, who face the daunting task of exploring their sexuality and relationships in an increasingly digital world. Lawmakers and the government in South Korea are way behind in understanding how to prevent and respond to gender-based violence using tech and in online spaces. It’s past time for them to catch up.
In her book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, subtitled ‘Women and Desire in the Age of Consent’, Katherine Angel debates the current situation of the past few years, especially since Me Too, in which ‘consent’ and ‘self-knowledge’ have become more important to women than anything else when it comes to sex. Unlike the 1960s and 70s in the West, and Korea in the 1990s, during which ‘liberation’ and ‘freedom’ were keywords, contemporary feminism is much more associated with hurt and violence. In other words, modern feminists don’t have space for desire and exploration of desire, and instead prioritise ‘safety’ and ‘transparency’. In particular, Korea’s notorious illegal filming (otherwise known as ‘Molka’) and revenge porn have become the key agenda for the country’s younger generation of feminists. That the primary concern of the ‘Hyehwa Station Feminist Protests’ – which played one of the central roles in young feminists’ self-identification and social realisation – was an insistence on a fair and impartial investigation of Molka, is proof of this.
Gyeong-ah’s Daughter captures this relationship between the sexuality and daily lives of 2020s’ young Korean women. The methods through which male violence has long since operated have gained greater destructive influence with the infiltration of digital technology, where the intimate time and space between lovers is no longer safe. When it comes to sex (and digital photography), women’s consent and self-knowledge is constantly brought into question, and women end up punishing themselves. The film depicts in detail how both the freedom and insecurity of sex and independence present an even greater threat to women’s lives with the introduction of digital technology. As the film’s title would suggest, not only is the digital sex crime victim, Yeon-su, important, but also her mother, Gyeong-ah, as well as the relationship between the two women. Through the mother’s perspective , the film reveals how women’s lives are an endless string of turmoil and hurt in the space between freedom and safety, and that this was the same even before Me Too. On one hand, the film is a thoughtful consideration of the complex gender-based aspects of the ‘intimacy’ demanded of care worker Gyeong-ah and teacher Yeon-su (both of whose careers are considered ‘women’s professions’ in Korea). On the other hand, Gyeong-ah’s Daughter shows us in detail the dual-natured and complex aspects of the power and relationships that modern Korean women come up against.
Meanwhile, sexuality has become the centre of debate in Korean society through yet other means related to equality and discrimination. In 2007, Korea was on the verge of bringing in a historical ‘anti-discrimination law’. However, when the Ministry of Justice announced the upcoming legislation, they removed ‘sexuality’ from the anti-discrimination item, and following opposition from countless citizens and activists, the ‘ruined’ anti-discrimination law was not passed. Since then, there has been a push across society for the enactment of an ‘inclusive’ anti-discrimination law that incorporates sexuality, but entrenched homophobia has prevented this from happening. Coming to You – a documentary that tells of two ‘mums’ who, after their children’s coming-out, join the ‘Queer Children’s Parents Club’, and undergo self-transformation – captures scenes surrounding sexuality in Korean society. The film was produced by ‘PINKS’, a collective making documentaries tackling discrimination and injustice within Korean society, and director Byun Gyu-ri has said in multiple interviews that the biggest motivation for the film was to help bring about the enactment of an anti-discrimination law. Though Coming to You places the Queer Children’s Parents Club at the fore, what it considers most important (as the film’s opening proves) is giving voice to the minoritized individuals who have been rendered invisible all across society. I hope that audiences, much like the parents in the film, regardless of whether or not they are able to welcome the ‘coming’ out of these individuals, might experience a gradual change and become allies supporting minorities. In 2021, the anti-discrimination law once again failed to pass, and while the institutionalisation of anti-discrimination in Korea remains far off, Coming to You is a simple but tremendous ray of hope.
Hwang Miyojo, Seoul International Women’s Film Festival Programmer
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THE LONDON KOREAN FILM FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ITS PROGRAMME
Special Presentation of Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Award Winning BROKER
Critically Acclaimed RETURN TO SEOUL
Closing Film: KIM Han-min’s HANSAN: RISING DRAGON
Following the announcement of Choi Dong-hoon’sAlienoid opening the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF), the festival is proud to reveal its 2022 programme filled with critically acclaimed films, exciting new talent, Korean box office hits, the latest K-Horror films, powerful female filmmakers and boundary pushing documentaries. The world’s longest running film festival dedicated to Korean cinema, runs from 3 November – 17 November 2022 in cinema venues across London.
With the biggest programme dedicated to Korean cinema outside of the country itself, the exciting programme includes 35+ films across strands including Cinema Now, Special Focus, After Dark: K-Horror, Indie Talents, Women’s Voices, Documentary, Shorts and Artist Video.
Kim Han-min’s follow up to The Admiral: Roaring Currents (2014), the naval warfare blockbuster that remains the most successful Korean film of all time,Hansan: Rising Dragon closes the festival on 17th November at Regent St Cinema. The gala screening is followed by a Q&A with Kim Han-min. The prequel returns to the legendary exploits of Joseon Era admiral Yi Sun-sin and, teeming white knuckle tension, steers us through an impeccably realized and epic David-vs-Goliath struggle out in the open sea. The Admiral: Roaring Currentsalso features as a Special Screening earlier in the programme.
As part of the LKFF collaboration with the V&A exhibition Hallyu! The Korean Wave, Choi Dong-hoon’s crime caper, The Thieves features in the special screening programme. One of the region’s largest co-productions with a fantastic Korean and Hong Kong ensemble cast, including Squid Game’s Lee jung-jae, and a gripping high impact caper story, The Thievesis one of the biggest grossing films in Korea’s box office history. The special screening is followed by a Q&A with Choi Dong-hoon and a reception at the V&A.
Among the Special screenings is Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Award Winning Broker – one of the year’s most highly acclaimed films, The whimsical and beautifully crafted film played in competition at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival and won Song Kang-ho (Parasite, The Host) a Best Actor award at Cannes – making history as the first Korean actor to do so. The screening is followed by a Q&A with the film’s translator Darcy Paquet.
Cinema Now offers an exciting range of films from the past year, the very latest in Korean cinema. Jeong Ji-yeon’s mesmerizing psychological thriller The Anchor plays out its genre tropes to dizzying perfection, while also addressing the inequalities and traumas which women both face and hand down in Korean society. The screening is followed by a Q&A with Jeong Ji-yeon at Picturehouse Central. In the riveting Return To Seoul, which premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival under the Un Certain Regard section, director Davy Chou centers on a woman searching for her identity, inspired by the real life experience of Chou’s friend. The protagonist is played by Park Ji-min in a critically acclaimed breakthrough performance. Byun Sung-hyun’sKingmaker is a saga of aspiration and ambition set during the dictatorship era of 1963-1979 and is powered by two excellent performances by Sul Kyung-gu(The Book of fish) and Lee Sun-kyun(Parasite). Hot Blooded is the long awaited directorial debut by acclaimed novelist and screenwriter Cheon Myeong-kwan and is a norish tale on the tribulations of a gangster in a multi-layered performance by Jung Woo. In Stellar: A Magical Ride, director Kwon Soo-kyung embarks on a comedic road chase fueled with nostalgia and charm. Romance gets a second chance in Director’s Intention by Kim Min-geun with a location scout and a film director taking a trip down memory lane.
LKFF presents a widely and feverishly appreciated genre, rooted in psychological and emotional reality, with its After Dark: K-Horror strand. Park Kang’s intense, ambiguous feature Seire(the 3 week confinement period for mother and newborn) is a subtle, serious, slow-burn exposé of one man’s inner psyche, both waking and dreaming. Drawing liberally (if dynamically) on both Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining and Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale Of Two Sisters, Contorted by Kang Dong-hun places a child in harrowing peril and concerns a house and a family both haunted where mental illness and domestic history merge into one. Set in a community centre where a mass murder took place, Guimoon: The Lightless Door involves a paranormal investigator who discovers a door to another world in a wild, bewildering and increasing frantic ghost train of a ride by Sim Deok-geun. The Fifth Thoracic Vertebra by Park Sye-young is a melancholic, monstrous, experimental horror dealing with a creature’s need to feed but also sets human drama and dreams against an irrational canvas of nature. Park’s short film Cashbag is programmed alongside and follows a man in a series of nocturnal transactions ending always in a similar waterside location.
Female filmmakers and talent continue to be front and center of the festival in the dedicated Women’s Voices strand. A Women’s Voices networking event launches the strand ahead of the screening of Kim Jung-eun’s Gyeong-ah’s Daughter on 13th November. The screening is followed by a Q&A with Kim Jung-eun at Cine Lumiere . Other powerful and thought provoking titles within the strand include Byun Gyu-ri’s Coming To You on two mothers coming to terms with their children’s sexuality and join the ‘Queer Children’s Parents Club’. In collaboration with the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival, the following films have been selected: Bae Cyan’s auto-fiction documentary Dear Chaemin, which examines violence against queer communities in Seoul and among Asian communities in Europe; Yang Yoon-jung’s school drama Special Scholarship which deals with fierce politics among students of different demographics; Jeon Chae-lin’s Dear Kimsisters in 1959 that takes a look at the impact and influence of the popular The Kim Sisters female pop group at the height of the Cold War and the provocative Nipple War 3 by Paek Siwon sets out to question Korean society’s views on women’s bodies.
The programme includes a Special Focus strand dedicated to internationally celebrated, acclaimed actress Kang Soo-yeon. Beloved within Korea as a young actor, Kang became well known on the international stage with her breakout role in Im Kwon-taek’s The Surrogate Woman in 1987. Kang won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 44th Venice International Film Festival for her role, making her the first Korean actor to receive an award at a major international film festival. Considered a national treasure, Kang passed away on 7th May 2022 of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 55.
Additional Kang Soo-yeon films at the festival include Come Come Come Upward (1989), for which she won a Best Actress Award at the 1989 Moscow International Film Festival; The Road To The Race Track (1991) for which she won multiple Best Actress Awards at Asian Film Festivals; Girls’ Night Out (1998) which showed her comedic talents; and Rainbow Trout (1999) which won the Special Jury Prize at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2000.
Founder and former chairman of the Busan International Film Festival, Kim Dong-ho and Director of the Korean Film Archive, Kim Hong-joon will be participating in the Forum event dedicated to Kang and the Korea’s cinema landscape of her era. Kang was the co-director of BIFF from 2015-2017. Both Kim Dong-ho and Kim Hong-joon will be participating in Q&As following the screenings of Come Come Come Upward and The Road To The Race Track.
The Documentary strand features The 2nd Repatriation by Kim Dongwon focuses on political prisoners living in Seoul, who still hope for repatriation to North Korea. The film is a follow-up to the director’s 2003 documentaryRepatriation about the 63 long-term ‘unconverted’ political prisoners repatriated to North Korea in 2000. Also featured is Melting Icecreamby Hong Jinhwon, a documentary based on archival footage and I Am More is a fascinating study of ‘life as a stage’ by Lee II-ha as he depicts the life of More (Mo Jimin) a popular drag artist.
Indie Talents showcases new and emerging filmmakers and includes Lee Ji-eun’sThe Hill of Secrets (2022 Berlinale, Generation Kplus Competition) on a young girl caught between two conflicting worlds, played by Moon Seung-a, one of Korean cinema’s most exceptional child actors. Hot in Day, Cold at Night(2022 Berlin International Film Festival, Forum) might appear to be a depressing tale of economic hardship, but filmmaking-screenwriting duo Park Song-yeol and Won Hyang-ra – who also play the leading roles – have an entirely different tone in mind. Although not quite a comedy, the film’s finely-calibrated blend of sardonic humour and touching vulnerability have made this one of the year’s most talked-about Korean independent films. A quietly observed film with strong resonance, A Lonely Island in the Distant Sea by Kim Mi-young is a thoughtful consideration of a man facing the unexpected. Through My Midwinter, Oh Seong-ho’s debut feature, deals with a relationship under pressure and is made vivid by the performances of Kwon Da-ham and Kwon So-hyun (a former member of K-pop group 4Minute) as the stressed but sympathetic couple.
The Jeonju Shorts strand consists of a selection of shorts from this year’s awards winners (in the Shorts category) at the Jeonju International Film Festival including In The Dry Stream by Kang Ji-hyo, a subtle and poignant tale of childhood dreams that must make way for unhappy adult realities. Wunderkammer 10.0 by Ki Yelim, Park Soyun and Jung Inwoo, part science fiction, part social commentary, part art installation, this short is both a mystery and a manifesto. Moon Hyein’sTransit tests the bonds of friendship in light of gender transition. Students seek freedom and revenge in Yoo Jongseok’sLight It Up at 2AM. Framily by Kim In-hye deals with the complications of family ties and how they can strengthen in adversity. Paek Siwon’sLayers of Summer contemplates if unrequited love can be rekindled. 29th Breath by Kook Joong-yi focuses on an aspiring actress who keeps getting cast as a zombie and struggles to keep her dream alive – with dramatic consequences. In Kim Min-ju’s Trade, the lives of two very different, troubled people collide and they strive to outwit one another for their own again.
In the Artist Video strand, LUX and the LKFF join forces to present the first UK solo exhibition by Korean artist Yun Choi, who collects images, words and behaviors marked by Korean banality and remixes them for her videos and multimedia installations, tracing collective belief and reverie that underlie absurd socio-political phenomena. The exhibition at LUX presents two films that explore language as a bodily experience: the latest rendition of Choi’s film Where the Heart Goes_Poetry Collection (2022), and Viral Lingua (2018), a collaborative film made with Minhwi Lee.
The 17th London Korean Film Festival 2022 will take place from 3 November – 17 November.
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For any press requests please contact festival publicist: Sanam Hasan: shasanpr@gmail.com (+44 7837 441 248)
For a good decade and a half, from the mid-1980s till the end of the 1990s, Kang Soo-yeon was one of the most significant actors in Korean television and film. After that period, she made the odd cameo (With a Girl of Black Soil 2007, Sunny 2011), even tried her hand at crime-horror (The Circle 2003) or performed in limited roles in films such as the bombastic Hanbando (2006) or Im Kwon-taek’s valedictory Hanji (2010). The focus of our LKFF retrospective is, however, on her earlier work: from one early example of Kang’s television career in High School Diary (1983) to Park Jong-won’s neglected Rainbow Trout (1999) where she lends her star quality to a talented ensemble.
The sudden and unexpected death of Kang Soo-yeon this past May shocked entertainment professionals, ordinary Koreans, especially those who had grown up watching her performances, and film critics around the world. After all, since winning the ‘la Coppa Volpi’ at the 1987 Venice film festival for ‘la miglior interpretazione femminile’ (the first winner had been Katherine Hepburn in 1934) Kang in a sense belonged to world cinema. And it is in a globalised limbo of streaming services that her final film role still has yet to materialise. Release of the sci-fi dystopian thriller Jung_E (정이), with Kang as a brain-cloning scientist, still awaits the whims of Netflix schedulers.
It really does appear to be true that Kang was scouted right off the street, spotted as potential talent by an upcoming TV station before she had begun elementary school. From children’s TV programmes it wasn’t a big shift to taking small film roles as well. By 1976 she carries off a fairly substantial part as a post-war orphan in the film Blood Relations; in 1979 she is the central character in A Letter from Heaven, the sentimental tale of a girl learning to live with grief. Mi-gyeong writes to her dead father in heaven, the kind local postman writes replies in his guise. It is probably the first of Kang’s performances that older Koreans remember to this day: the sparkling eyes, the smile, the killer dimples, the sheer skill of the acting – it seems all there from the start. She was, by the way, all of thirteen-years old.
A first adult role came with Whale Hunting II (1985). When Lee Mi-sook, female star of Bae Chang-ho’s original 1984 hit Whale Hunting, declined the part for family commitments, Kang Soo-yeon took it. Although this follow-up feature wasn’t the success of the earlier film, Kang’s pickpocketing amnesiac Young-hee was an irresistible mix of cheekiness and vulnerability. Women actors of Lee Mi-sook’s slightly older generation would get used to seeing Kang taking on parts that once might have seemed destined for them. The year she made her international breakthrough with The Surrogate Woman (1986), Kang embodied Soon-na, another example of wounded cheekiness, in We Are Now Going to Geneva (1987). From cheerful teenager Kang was being transformed, it seemed, into a staple of melodrama, that good-girl-gone-bad who is still retrievable through love of a good man, or her mother.
Kang Soo-yeon, however, chose to work with directors who saw her potential for a much wider range of expression. For example, the 1980s was Im Kwon-taek’s finest decade.
Twice he called on Kang to realise extremely challenging roles, first as Ong-nyeo in The Surrogate Woman then only a few years later she became his Soon-nyeo, the tormented nun of Come, Come, Come Upward (1989). In the next decade, generally a tough one for Korean filmmakers, she worked with two of the most original artistic filmmakers in Korean cinema: Jang Sun-woo and Lee Myung-se. Her role in The Road to the Race Track (1991) as the cryptically named J calls upon her to be at once deliciously dishonest and elusively sexual in this parodic portrait of intellectual life at century’s end. It is hard not to read the film as a bittersweet critique of that 3-8-6 generation who, born in the 1960s and having struggled for political change during their youth in the 1980s, were settling into a conformist, disillusioned thirty-something existence in the 1990s. Postmodern blues, Seoul style.
Park Jong-won made some of the best films of the 1990s, though he is largely unknown outside his country. The 1999 Rainbow Trout gives us a chance to see Kang working with a team of both veteran and upcoming actors. Future star Sul Kyung-gu plays her husband. New Year 2000 saw the release of Lee Chang-dong’s contemporary classic Peppermint Candy, starring Sul Kyung-gu: Sol was poised on the crest of the wave of Korean film’s surge into the new century.
One television episode and five films cannot present anything like a full portrait of Kang Soo-yeon’s career. From well over forty films, we have picked features which should make clear the fact that in a relatively brief period of intense artistic activity, Kang achieved more, created more than most actors could hope to realise in a career of many decades.
2022 marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Pannori Arirang (1982). Though there’s room for dispute, the film is widely understood to be Korea’s very first ‘independent’ documentary, and was also an original work of the Seoul Film Collective, formed by key members of the Seoul National University ‘Yalashang’ film club. Though there had been documentaries before this, they were at best government-sponsored newsreels, educational propaganda termed ‘culture films’, or TV broadcaster video journalism. At the time, it was also in principle illegal to make documentaries outside of the formal system and screen them publicly. The Sanyggyedong Olympics (1988) – the first film directed by Kim Dong-won, known as the ‘godfather’ of Korean independent documentary – acted like a foaming agent that stimulated the video activism of young filmmakers armed with a political and social consciousness. Last year, with the pandemic ongoing and restrictions continuing within society, Kim Dong-won celebrated the 30-year anniversary of the documentary collective PURN Productions, established 1991. PURN Productions’ work continues on even now, with the group’s newest member, Lee Hyo-jin, premiering her first feature length documentary, Unprovoked Home,in August this year at the Seoul International Women’s Film Festival.
This year, the London Korean Film Festival presents three documentaries. Kim Dong-won’s newest work, The 2nd Repatriation (2022), premiered at the Jeonju International Film Festival this year, and is the follow-up to Repatriation (2003, shown at the LKFF in 2018), which examined the lives of ‘un-converted’ long term political prisoners repatriated to North Korea in 2000 following an agreement between the North and the South. In the sequel, Kim Dong-won focuses instead on those who ‘converted’ under torture, oppression, and appeasement, and thus whose names did not make the list for repatriation, but who have insisted their conversions were invalid. Kim Dong-won first met the long-term prisoners and began capturing their lives on camera in 1992, the year after PURN Productions was established. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Repatriation and The 2nd Repatriation (of whose filming several of PURN Productions documentarists participated in) are the 21st-century’s most important and monumental works of Korean film. Queer identity and culture is no longer an unfamiliar topic within Korean documentary. Lee Il-ha’s I Am More (2021), which covers the life of drag artist Mo Jimin, premiered at the DMZ International Documentary Film Festival, and was released this year to positive responses from both critics and audiences. The documentary makes abundant use of the style of advertisements and music videos as well as online video content, a style which suits the somewhat fantastic nature of the time-and-space ‘performance stage’ that carries so much weight in the protagonist’s life. Photographer Jinhwon Hong’s first film, Melting Icecream (2021), is assumed to be a record of Korea’s democratisation movement, but the work in fact began with the discovery of film severely damaged by flooding. Hong, who carries the unique methodology of his experimentation in photography across into film, approaches activism from a critical standpoint, and reimagines it by joining the flow of alternative Korean documentary.
These works predict the outlook of contemporary Korean documentary, in which participatory activism, mainstream style, and experimentation within the contemporary art world intersect in the absence of hierarchy. Though it is true that due to the ongoing pandemic, the situation surrounding documentary production and distribution has worsened, numbers of films have still drawn in considerable audiences upon release regardless. We must focus on the fact that the works of women documentary makers, such as Byun Gyu-ri’s Coming to You (screening this year in a different section of the LKFF), are noticeably reconfiguring the terrain of Korean documentary.
Every past, and every future, begins in its own now. Though ideally timeless, and typically manifesting some time after they were originally conceived, films are always instantiated in and bound to the present of their release – and so while there are other strands in the London Korean Film Festival which take a more retrospective or historic look at the national filmic output, the purpose of the Cinema Now strand is to offer a synchronic cross section of contemporary, popular Korean cinema, and to take the temperature of the moment, at the ever-shifting coalface of the here and now where chronology and culture intersect in real time.
So even though a film like Byun Sung-hyun’s period piece Kingmaker (2021) might be looking back to the turbulent Sixties and Seventies when Korea was still under the oppressive thumb of military dictatorship, it is also looking forward to a kind of figure – the political spin doctor – who is still prevalent in today’s politics. And while the vehicle for Kwon Soo-kyung’s Stellar: A Magical Ride(2021) might be a barely roadworthy Hyundai Stellar from the late Eighties, it transports its repo man hero (and us with him) on a present-day journey which will reconcile him both to his late estranged dad, and to his own future fatherhood.
The past also collides with the present in Kim Min-geun’s Director’s Intention (2021), as a location scout retreads her old romantic haunts in Busan with a film director who has long since left her – but is perhaps back to rekindle old love. Or in Davy Chou’s Return to Seoul (2022), where a Francophone young woman, made part of the Korean diaspora as a baby, returns to Seoul several times to find herself and to reconnect with her lost roots, her fractured identity, and her birth parents. Or in a different way in Cheon Myeong-kwan’s chess-like low-key crime thriller Hot Blooded (2021), which opens near its end, and then spends much of its remaining duration catching up with that critical moment of a low-rent gangster’s fate, as he makes a move that will forever change his course in life.
My favourite of this year’s films, TheAnchor (2022, Jeong Ji-yeon), also plays games with time, shuffling different periods and personae into a single, intensely twisty psychodrama about mothers and daughters, mesmerism and madness. Its lead character Jung Se-ra (Chun Woo-hee), a TV news anchor, is driven in her career by her domineering mother Lee So-jeong (Lee Hye-yeong) – herself a one-time news anchor – and briefly crosses paths with yet another young mother Yoon Mi-so (Park Se-hyeon) whose traumatised, triggering fate resonates with Se-ra’s own in enigmatic, irrational ways. This tightly plotted, disorienting thriller is a chronicle of women under pressure in a man’s world, and promises a long future for its exceedingly talented writer/director Jeong Ji-yeon. For if her last work, the short film Blooming in Spring, came out as long ago as 2008, it is never too late to bloom again.
Korean horror, or K-horror, has history. It could be argued that Kim Ki-young’s classic The Housemaid (1960) was horror in much the same way that Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) were. The Housemaid was certainly as influential as these films (and has been remade many times, including twice by Kim himself). Yet it was in the Hallyu, or Korean Wave, that horror would really come into its own, as censorship was relaxed with the end of military dictatorship, as a host of young filmmakers would prove deft at switching codes and genres, and as the accomplished results of their work would perfectly match the criteria of Tartan’s Asia extreme label, guaranteeing them an audience outside of Korea.
So, over the last few decades, the haunted high-school hallways of the Whispering Corridors series (1998-2009, 2021-), the ghostly psychodrama of Kim Jee-woon’s A Tale of Two Sisters (2003), the Carpenter-esque war-is-hell manœuvres of Kong Su-chang’s R-Point (2004), the Zola-adapting vampirism of Park Chan-wook’s Thirst (2009), the barrelling locomotive undead of Yeon Sang-ho’s Train to Busan (2016), the ambiguous smalltown devilry of Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing (2016), and the found-footage freakery of Jung Bum-shik’s Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018) have all left their imprint on the international consciousness, while coming with a decidedly local flavour of fear.
Both in celebration of this “Horror Wave”, and also just because it has been a very good year for genre cinema in Korea, the London Korean Film Festival is putting on a special strand devoted to contemporary Korean horror. This includes Kang Dong-hun’s twisted haunted house/family saga Contorted (2021), in which a new rental home becomes an arena for a dysfunctional clan’s toxic dissolution. Then there is Sim Deok-geon’s Guimoon: The Lightless Door (2021), set in a single space (a cursed community centre) over multiple, intersecting timelines, as different characters drawn to the abandoned building in different years keep crossing paths in their desperate attempts to escape a doom that may already have happened.
Meanwhile Park Kang’s Seire (2021) is an adult film about a newborn ritual, as a father ignores his wife and mother-in-law’s superstitions surrounding postpartum care and exposes himself to ill-omened encounters (a funeral, an encounter with the identical twin of his late ex-girlfriend) and then finds his home life unravelling. And last but not least is Park Sye-young’s messy mattress horrorThe Fifth Thoracic Vertebra (2021), in which the intensity and impermanence of human relations are shown from the peculiar perspective of a mutating, spine-eating fungus, with unexpectedly moving results. Given its relatively brief duration (60 minutes), this will be accompanied by Park’s (non-horror) short film about Korean barter culture and real values, Cashbag.
Another obvious inclusion might have been Jeong Ji-yeon’s mesmerically disorienting feature debut The Anchor (2022) about several women on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but that can instead be seen in this year’s Cinema Now strand.
The 2022 London Korean Film Festival Special Focus strand celebrates actress Kang Soo-yeon.
Beloved within Korea as a young actor, Kang became well known on the international stage with her breakout role in Im Kwon-taek’s The Surrogate Woman in 1987. Kang won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 44th Venice International Film Festival for her role, making her the first Korean actor to receive an award at a major international film festival.
Kang was the co-director of BIFF from 2015-2017.
Considered a national treasure, Kang passed away on 7th May 2022 of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 55.
5 key films from Kang’s illustrious career will screen in the LKFF 2022 programme.
The 17th London Korean Film Festival 2022 will take place from 3 November – 17 November.
The London Korean Film Festival (3- 17 November 2022) is seeking enthusiastic volunteers to carry out specific roles across the Festival and during the build-up.
Our volunteer programme is a good way to gain experience in a variety of areas, from event production to technical, while also gaining insight into the film festival sector and Korean culture. Depending on the shift, volunteers’ responsibilities might include providing good customer service to our audiences, guests and delegates. We will also have various runner or production crew tasks, while volunteers available before the Opening Night (Nov 3) will have the opportunity to shadow members of the Marketing, Events and Programming departments, taking on general office administration tasks, and helping prepare the 2022 edition of the festival.
Specific working hours and duties will differ for each programme/event and will be discussed and agreed with the LKFF staff following the selection and recruitment process.
NOTE: You will be expected to commit to a minimum of 5 shifts during the festival time (3 -17 November).
All LKFF volunteers working over 4 hours on any given day will receive subsistence and travel cover.
– Eligibility: Over 18s
– Festival Location: Central London.
– Application Process:
Please submit your application (CV) via online form. Your CV should outline why you are interested in the role, as well as the skills and experience. The closing date for applications is 30 September 2022.
Once applications have been processed, selected candidates will be invited to attend an interview on either 5 or 6 October 2022.
– Deadline: Friday 30th September 2022, 2pm
If you have any questions, please get in touch via info@kccuk.org.uk .
SPECIAL FOCUS DEDICATED TO KOREAN FILM LEGEND KANG SOO-YEON
UNVEILS NEW FESTIVAL ART
Full LKFF2022 programme details will be announced on 4 October including screenings, introductions, Q&As and more.
For any press requests please contact festival publicist Sanam Hasan: shasanpr@gmail.com
The world’s longest running film festival dedicated to Korean cinema, the London Korean Film Festival (LKFF) returns with its 17th edition. LKFF will run from 3 November – 17 November 2022 in cinema venues across London. Tickets go on sale 4 October.
With the biggest programme dedicated to Korean cinema outside of the country itself, the festival is proud to return with an exciting programme of 35+ films across strands including Cinema Now, Special Focus, After Dark: K-Horror, Indie Talents, Women’s Voices, Documentary, Shorts and Artist Video.
Korean Sci-fi film, Choi Dong-hoon’s Alienoid opens the festival on 3rd November at the Institute for Contemporary Arts (ICA) with the director in attendance. A box office hit in Korea starring leading talent including Ryu Jun-yeol, Kim Woo-bin and Kim Tae-ri, the LKFF Opening is the film’s UK premiere.
The programme includes a Special Focus strand dedicated to internationally celebrated, acclaimed actress Kang Soo-yeon. Beloved within Korea as a young actor, Kang became well known on the international stage with her breakout role in Im Kwon-taek’s The Surrogate Woman in 1987. Kang won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the 44th Venice International Film Festival for her role, making her the first Korean actor to receive an award at a major international film festival. Considered a national treasure, Kang passed away on 7th May 2022 of a cerebral haemorrhage at the age of 55.
Founder and former chairman of the Busan International Film Festival, Kim Dong-ho and Director of the Korean Film Archive, Kim Hong-joon will be participating in the Forum event dedicated to Kang and the Korea’s cinema landscape of her era. Kang was the co-director of BIFF from 2015-2017.
LKFF is proud to reveal this year’s LKFF artwork designed by Korean duo Hong Eunjoo and Kim Hyungjae.
Eunji Lee, Film Curator London Korean Film Festival:
“We are proud to be back exclusively in cinemas for this landmark 17th edition. The LKFF is celebrating this milestone with a unique programme of UK and European premieres of culturally important titles from Sci-fi spectacle as well as more low-key cinematic beauty. For the first time in two years, our festival will see a larger number of guests in attendance. This year we are pleased to welcome many prominent filmmakers and scholars from Korea, joining us for live introductions and Q&As. You can feel the joy of discovery with all the Korean films across the nine strands and accompanying special events.”
Screenings at last year’s festival were very well received by audiences, closely selling out at 8 cinema venues. This year’s festival returns to 10 cinemas within London and two regional venues: Cine Lumiere, Garden Cinema, Lux, Rio Cinema, V&A Museum, ICA, Genesis Cinema, Picturehouse Central, Regent Street Cinema and HOME Manchester and Glasgow Film Theatre.