ACF 1269: Free screening of LEE Chang-dong's POETRY

Korean Cultural Service

presents

Korean Movie Night

Poetry/ Shi

South Korea, 2010, 139 minutes

When: Tuesday, December 20, 2011 @ 7:00 PM

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served.

Winner - “Best Screenplay” - Cannes Film Festival

Winner - “Best Screenplay” - Asian Film Awards

“…quietly devastating…” - The New York Times

“…daring…haunting…a character study of remarkable subtlety…” - The Los Angeles Times

Lee Chang-dong (Secret Sunshine, Oasis, Peppermint Candy) delivers yet another big screen triumph with Poetry, a movie which also marks the return to the silver screen of acting legend, Yoon Jeong-Hee, who has been retired since 1994. In Lee’s film, she plays a 67 year-old grandmother, taking care of her loutish grandson and barely scraping by with a series of odd jobs.

As the movie begins, she has been given a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and so she enrolls in a poetry class in an effort to sharpen her mental faculties and delay the advance of her dementia. Simultaneously, a young girl who lives in her neighborhood commits suicide and slowly, in Lee’s expert hands, the strands of this narrative — a brute of a grandson, a tired old woman, poetry, suicide, senility — all come together to deliver yet another of Lee’s enormous, epic, subtle, sprawling portraits of the wo rld.

It’s a movie that should be compared to a novel for all of its elegance and depth, but that is also, truly, cinema: a story that could not be told any other way but in enormous, illuminated images.

For my review of Poetry, which ran on September 26, 2010, click here. The film, which was then screening at the New York Film Festival, earned the highest possible ACF Rating of 4 out of 4 stars. I've watched it again since then, and that rating holds now and will no doubt hold in the future.

ACF 1244: Free screening of DANCING ZOO next Tuesday

 Korean Cultural Service NY

presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 6: Music Films

 

  Dancing Zoo

South Korea, 2010, 114 minutes

When: Tuesday, November 22, 2011 @ 7:00 PM

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served.

North American Premiere

It flew under the radar when it was first released, but since then it’s picked up thousands of passionate underground fans. A riff on A Star is Born mixed with a little bit of Once, this is one of the sweetest, saddest movies about two kids with guitars who fall in love ever made. It’s a familiar story for everyone from struggling Williamsburg singer-songwriters, to Seoul’s underground rockers.

Joon-Soo and Hee-Jung meet cute when he’s singing a break-up song to a monkey in the zoo, the two fall for each other and decide to take their relationship to the next level: they start a band together. But one gets successful, while the other falls by the wayside, and it’s not clear that any number of power pop duets can keep them together. If you were ever in a band, this one’s for you.

ACF 1223: Free screening of DREAM FACTORY on Tuesday, November 8th

 Korean Cultural Service NY

presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 6: Music Films

Dream Factory

South Korea, 2011, 80 minutes

When: Tuesday, November 8, 2011 @ 7:00 PM

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served.

North American Premiere

One part Occupy Wall Street outrage, one part rock film, this documentary focuses on the labor battles between Cort Guitars, one of the largest guitar manufacturers in the world, and their workers. Contrasting the down-to-earth, blue collar workers who make the guitars and the upper class rockers who play them, this flick follows the protest movement that grew among Cort workers after they tried to unionize in 2007. Management’s response was to shut down the plant where they worked.

One worker set himself on fire to protest, while the others started a hunger strike. Groups of workers went around the world asking the musicians who play the guitars they made to support their cause and everyone from Rage Against the Machine to Gene Simmons (who comes across REALLY poorly) get involved. Truly moving, and capturing on film some of the violent tactics Cort’s owners employed to break up the strike, it’s a documentary that speaks loudly in these restless times to the value of working with your hands to make a better life for your kids.

ACF 1198: Free screning of "Moss"

 Korean Cultural Service NY

presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 5: Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema, Part II

Moss

Directed by: Kang Woo-Suk

South Korea, 2010, 163 minutes

When: Monday, October 31st @ 7:00 PM
(Halloween Special Screening)

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served.

Kang Woo-Suk has made more blockbusters than any other Korean director
(PUBLIC ENEMY, SILMIDO, HANBANDO) and this movie, stuffed with stars, was
yet another massive critical and commercial hit for him.

A disgraced cop travels to the remote village where his estranged father has just died of "natural causes" and rapidly uncovers a conspiracy that reaches back decades and encompasses hundreds of people. An epic thriller, this unrelenting flick grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go.

ACF 1183: END OF ANIMAL reviewed

Korean Cultural Service NY

presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 5: Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema, Part II

Jang Soon-young wanders through the woods

End of Animal

Written and directed by: Jo Sung-Hee

South Korea, 2010, 114 minutes

When: Tuesday, October 11th @ 7:00 PM

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served. 

Jang Soon-young, a cute, young, pregnant woman with a page-boy haircut, is taking a taxi to her mother's home where she plans to give birth to her child. Before reaching a rest area, the taxi stops and takes on another rider, an enigmatic young man with a baseball cap. He displays an uncanny knowledge of intimate details about both Soon-young and the taxi driver. His apparent omniscience suggests that he is either a psychic or a psycho, or perhaps something more.

He begins a countdown, and when he gets to zero there is a blinding white flash. Soon-young wakes up alone in the cab. The driver has left a note that he's gone to the rest area to get aide and will return. The young man is nowhere to be seen. And all things electronic - cellphones, digital watches, etc. - no longer work, as if the area has been struck by an electro-magnetic pulse.

The couple from the car and 5th grader Yang Dong-ju

Soon-young wanders down the road, finds a house, but no one is around and the phone doesn't work. She then meets Yang Dong-ju, a 5th grade boy who we have previously seen drive off an adorable white puppy by throwing stones in its direction. Soon-young and Dong-ju set off for the rest area. Along the way they meet a couple standing by their car which, like the taxi, has totally broken down in the wake of the strange pulse.

The group sets off together, then some members separate. A strange man from a nearby village comes by with his bicycle. He offer aide, but his motives turn out to be not exactly altruistic. Soon-young's attempt to get to the rest area so she can call her mother, a clearly optimistic notion given the circumstances, is thwarted by various factors, such as injury and misreadings of maps. Some of those individuals encountered along the way wander off, then reappear. Others disappear completely, except for a piece of clothing they were wearing or an accessory they were carrying. Meanwhile, Soon-young somehow keeps getting advisory messages on her cellphone or other devices from the young man with the baseball cap!

Soon-young looking a bit worse for wear from her wanderings

End of Animal is the first feature film from director Jo Sung-hee, whose prior offering was the 2009 short Don't Step Out of the House, and quite frankly I'm not sure what to make of it. It's remarkably polished and compelling for a movie made on what must have been a miniscule budget. On the other hand, I have no idea if it's an apocalyptic tale or a low budget Korean riff on Rosemary's Baby, or perhaps a combination of the two and who knows what else. For me, End of Animal makes David Lynch's films, such as Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, and Mulholland Drive, seem almost clearly understandable in comparison.

For the first time in over eleven years of writing about Asian films, I find that I simply cannot assign a rating or give a clear recommendation. I'm glad I watched End of Animal (on a DVD screener), and perhaps I'll visit it again sometime. I definitely don't feel that it was a waste of my time. So with the caveat that it may leave you bewildered, befuddled and frustrated, I'd say check it out.

ACF 1172: END OF ANIMAL next Korean Movie Night film

Korean Cultural Service NY

presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 5: Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema, Part II

End of Animal

Written and directed by: Jo Sung-Hee

South Korea, 2011, 114 minutes

When: Tuesday, October 11th @ 7:00 PM

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served.

The first feature film from Jo Sung-Hee, whose horrifying DON'T GO OUT OF THE HOUSE! electrified film festival audiences, END OF ANIMAL is an apocalyptic flick that worms its way under your skin and then totally creeps you out.

Pregnant Soon-Young is in a cab on her way to her mom¹s house when awhite flash causes every electrical device in Korea to fail. Night iscoming, and she¹s trapped in the middle of nowhere as end-of-the-world feverturns all humans into nothing more than beasts.

ACF 1139: Free screening of Yoon Sung-Hyun's "Bleak Night" on Tuesday, September 6th

Korean Cultural Service NY

presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 5: Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema, Part II

Bleak Night / Pasuggun

Directed by: Yoon Sung-Hyun

South Korea, 2011, 117 minutes

When: Tuesday, September 6th @ 7:00 PM

Doors open: 6:30 PM

Where: Tribeca Cinemas

54 Varick Street, NYC

Near the A, C, E @ #1 Canal Street subway stops

Admission: FREE!!!

All seating is first-come, first served.

The Hollywood Reporter heralds director Yoon Sung-Hyun as one of the best new Korean filmmakers and director Bong Joon-Ho (The Host) calls his first movie “astonishing.” Yoon’s award-winning Bleak Night was the talk of the Rotterdam Film Festival and 2011’s indie break-out film in Korea, and it’s easy to see why. Leaping back and forth through time, the movie follows a grieving father as he tries to solve the mystery of his teenaged son’s suicide. Suffused with sadness, it’s one of the toughest movies about high school friendship ever made.

ACF 1124: Free screening of Korean thriller "A Dirty Carnival" on August 16th

Korean Cultural Service

Presents

Korean Movie Night

Series 4: The Summer of Thrillers

A Dirty Carnival / Biyeolhan geori

Written and Directed by Ha Yu

South Korea, 2006, 141 minutes

When: Tuesday, August 16th @ 7:00 PM

Doors open at 6:30 PM.

Where: Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street, NYC

One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops

Admission is Free

All seating is first-come, first served

Variety says that A DIRTY CARNIVAL, “elevates the genre to an epic narrative level” and they’re right. This movie about the sudden rise, and even more sudden fall, of a low level gangster is a tour de force of filmmaking, full of sharp dialogue, nail-biting set pieces and emotions that hit you like a baseball bat to the head. Only a modest hit when it was released, Yoo Ha’s gangster flick has gone on to become a contemporary classic and is now widely considered one of the best of the breed. Full of razor-sharp performances and given a Latin cha-cha beat, A DIRTY CARNIVAL takes all the genre’s cliches, turns them inside out and makes them new again.

ACF 1113: Free screening of Korean thriller "Seven Days" next Tuesday at 7:00 PM

Korean Cultural Service
Presents
Korean Movie Night
Series 4: The Summer of Thrillers

SEVEN DAYS
Directed by Won Shin-yeon
South Korea, 2007, 125 minutes
Tuesday, August 2nd @ 7:00 PM
Doors open at 6:30 PM.
Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street, NYC
One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops
Admission is Free
All seating is first-come, first served

Fans of Lost know her as Sun, but Kim Yun-Jin took home “Best Actress” at the Grand Bell Awards, Korea’s equivalent of the Oscars, for her portrayal of a Type A, stressed-out defense lawyer trying to rescue her kidnapped daughter in SEVEN DAYS.

The movie kicks off with her daughter going missing and a kidnapper calling and telling her that she has seven days to get a gangster off death row. The problem: all the evidence points to the guy being as guilty as sin and there’s no way she can win this one.

Thus begins a cat-and-mouse game that sees the set pieces coming down as hard as an avalanche. A popular hit at the box office, this is the kind of twist-a-minute screenplay that Hollywood used to make, given a jolt of pure Korean adrenaline.

ACF 1099: Free screening of "Bloody Tie" on Tuesday, July 19, 2011 in NYC

Korean Movie Night
Series 4: The Summer of Thrillers
presents

BLOODY TIE
Directed by Ho Choi
Korea, 2006, 115min
Tuesday, July 19 @ 7PM
Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street, NYC
One block from the A, C, E, and #1 Canal Street subway stops
Admission is Free
All seating is first-come, first served
Doors open at 6:30PM

A blackly comic, ridiculously violent neo-noir, BLOODY TIE is the informer movie as a buddy comedy where the jokes come covered in bruises and blood. Ryoo Seung-Bom plays a crystal meth dealer who wants to move up in the world and so he’s allied himself with a corrupt cop, played by Hwang Jung-Min. Together they’re two bad guys taking down the even worse guys in a movie where no sexual encounter is complete without a vow of vengeance and no friendship comes without a side order of backstabbing and betrayal.

ACF 1084: Free screening of Bong Joon-Ho's suspense thriller MOTHER this Tuesday

Korean Movie Night
Series 4: The Summer of Thrillers
presents

MOTHER
Directed by Bong Joon-Ho
Korea 2009, 128 minutes
Where: Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street
One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops
When: Tuesday, July 5th @ 7PM
Doors open at 6:30 PM
Price: Free!!!
All seating is first-come, first served.

Korean Cultural Service will be offering Mother as the first film in its newest series this coming Tuesday evening. The film is a fantastic suspense thriller that I found immensely engrossing and worthwhile. As always, KCS's Korean Movie Night screenings are FREE!!! If you don't already have conflicting plans to attend a New York Asian Film Festival movie Tuesday, I strongly urge you to see Mother. Even if you've seen it before; it's just that good.

Here's what Korean Cultural Service has to say about Mother:

Bong Joon-Ho’s MOTHER is the culmination of a lifetime of making some of the best genre movies ever seen, from his giant monster movie, THE HOST, to his true crime policier, MEMORIES OF MURDER. But MOTHER transcends genre, due in large part to the titular performance by Kim Hye-Ja playing a woman raising her mentally handicapped son (played by glamourpuss, Won Bin, going downscale). When her son is arrested and confesses to a murder that she knows he didn’t commit, nothing will stand in the way of a mother out for justice. An official selection of the Cannes Film Festival, there is no grander, bleaker monument to a mother’s love than this film.

ACF 1070: Screening & panel discussion on Kimchi Chronicles at Korean Cultural Service

Kimchi Chronicles
Special Screening & Cooking Demonstration
When: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 6:30 PM
Where: Korean Cultural Service NY
460 Park Avenue, 6th Floor
New York, NY 10022

Here's some info about a tasty, upcoming event at Korean Cultural Service NY:

Join the Korean Cultural Service NY for a special screening and an exciting panel discussion about Kimchi Chronicles with its producer Eric Rhee, host Marja Vongerichten, and moderator Jennifer Maeng, who is currently doing catering (Temple Catering Co.) and promoting Korean food in New York City as they converse about the prolific series on Korean cuisine and culture. A viewing of the first episode along with a preview of an episode that has not yet been shown followed by Questions and Answers with the panel. Marja Vongerichten will also provide a live demonstration of how to cook Bindaetteok (Korean-styled pancakes) with a recipe from her upcoming The Kimchi Chronicles Cookbook.

Kimchi Chronicles, produced by Eric Rhee and co-hosted by Marja Vongerichten and Jean-Georges Vongerichten, is the most anticipated television series on Korean culture and food to be aired on PBS. The 13-episode show dynamically explores Korean cuisine, culture, and popular Korean tourist attractions throughout the country with Marja Vongerichten, who is a Korean-born former actress and model, and her husband, world-renowned chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten. Following the couple’s quests and travels for authentic Korean food are various connoisseurs of Korean cuisine and friends such as actress Heather Graham who all partake in discovering the palatable joys of Korean food beyond just Kimchi.

Moreover, Kimchi Chronicles also provides instructions on how to recreate Korean dishes in the American home as the series goes back and forth between traveling in Korea to taste original Korean food to cooking them in Marja and Jean-Gorges’ kitchen back in Westchester, New York. In several episodes, even their neighbors Hugh and Deb Jackman join them to share Korean food in addition to new Korean-inspired dishes Jean-Gorges has created. All accessible recipes will be in the upcoming The Kimchi Chronicles Cookbook.

This is an opportunity you will not want to miss. While reservations are not required, RSVP is recommended. Seating will be provided on a first-come first-serve basis for the first 100 people.

To RSVP, please email rsvp@koreanculture.org. For more information, contact 212-759-9550 Ext.207.

TV Series Description
• Most high profile and widely seen TV series on Korean culture and food ever produced
• 13 high-definition episodes, half hour TV program to air on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the US and around the world
• Series will air on PBS as a special release in New York in May and nationwide in July 2011

ACF 1064: Cafe Noir screens for free Tuesday in New York

Korean Cultural Service's
Korean Movie Night Series 3:
The Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema
Presents

Cafe Noir
Directed by Jung Sung-il
South Korea, 2008, 198 minutes
When: Tuesday, June 21st @ 7PM
Doors open at 6:30 PM
Where: Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street
One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops
Price: Free!!!
All seating is first-come, first served.
New York Premiere

The Hollywood Reporter calls it “enthralling” while other trade papers have violently rejected it like a bad cheeseburger, but either way there’s nothing else out there like film critic Jung Sung-Il’s epic CAFE NOIR. A sprawling, multi-character feature in the vein of a postmodern Robert Altman movie, the film tells the tale of a rejected young lover and his married mistress, juggling visual styles, points-of-view and references to everything from Korean monster movie THE HOST to Dostoevsky’s White Nights and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Truly unique.

ACF 1043: LIM Woo-Seong's "Vegetarian"

Vegetarian / Chaesikjuuija
Directed by LIM Woo-Seong
2010, 113 minutes
Where: Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street
One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops
When: Tuesday, June 7 @ 7PM
Doors open at 6:30 PM
Price: Free!!!
All seating is first-come, first served.
New York Premiere

Vegetarian is quite simply the best film I've seen since watching Poetry by LEE Chang-dong (another Korean director) last fall. And considering how much I've praised LEE's films, you can appreciate how impressed I was by LIM's film. And it's screening tomorrow night for FREE!! as part of Korean Cultural Service's Korean Movie Night's current series, The Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema.

The movie begins in a wooded area. Rain is falling as the camera moves forward to reveal a slim woman standing by herself. She is Yeong-hye, and she is soon joined by three figures who have come to retrieve take her back to the hospital from which she's been wandered. The movie switches between flashback scenes depicting how Yeong-hye came to be hospitalized for mental and eating disorders and scenes set at the hospital where she is visited by her older sister.

Yeong-hye (right) is visited by her distraught sister

Yeong-hye's problems began because of dreams she had, ones that we only learn about to a degree and over the course of the movie. One night, her husband Gil-soo found her in the kitchen where she was throwing out all the meat in the refrigerator. Things come to the point where she claims she can smell meat her husband has eaten elsewhere through the pores of his skin.

When her husband must go out of town on business, she stays with her sister and brother-in-law and their young son. Min-ho Cho, the brother-in-law, is a video artist with a severe block. Observing Yeong-hye inspires him and he begins to fill his sketchbook with drawings at a furious pace. Eventually he asks her if she'll pose for him, allowing him to paint flowers and plants on her nude body, then videotape her.

Min-ho propeses that Yeong-hey model for him

When she agrees, he asks her to keep this a secret from her sister, his wife. Does he do this because he senses that this isn't a right thing to do, or is it merely a precaution to prevent conventional thinking from keeping him from realizing his artistic vision? Or perhaps a combination of the two?

These are the two threads with which the film weaves its engrossing tale: Yeong-hye's bizarrely intense aversion to meat -- with no attempt to eat a healthy vegetarian diet --and Min-ho's artistic quest. Or is the latter really a quest for sexual intimacy with his sister-in-law?

Yeong-hye (center) in her brother-in-law's studio, with
another model (left). Note Min-ho's video camera at right.

Based on the novel of the same name by HAN Kang, Vegetarian is a riveting psycho-sexual drama. I found it so engrossing that I was very tempted to immediately watch it a second time. Although that wasn't practical -- too many other films to watch and review right now -- it's definitely a film that I will be revisiting more than once. With only one viewing, I can't say definitively that it's a work of cinematic perfection, but if not it's damn close.

What a terrific film! Thank you Korean Cultural Service!

ACF Rating: 4 out of 4 stars, highest recommendation.

ACF 1032: NY Premiere of South Korean indie film "Vegetarian" on June 7th

Vegetarian
Directed by LIM Woo-Seong
2010, 113 minutes
Where: Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street
One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops
When: Tuesday, June 7 @ 7PM
Price: Free!!!
All seating is first-come, first served.
New York Premiere

Vegetarian will be the next film in Korean Cultural Society's Korean Movie Night Series 3: The Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema, which focuses on independent films.

Like a Korean version of Todd Haynes’s SAFE, this movie starts when a perfectly normal woman develops a meat phobia that shatters her ordinary life. Unable to stand the sight or smell of meat, soon she can’t even stand to be in the same room as her husband if he’s eaten meat that day. Turning darker, from a tale of a phobia to a story of erotic obsession, VEGETARIAN was an official selection of the Sundance Film Festival 2010 and it stars a posse of Korean indie scene veterans.

ACF 1020: Free sceening in NYC of Korean Indie "Missing Person" on Tuesday, May 24

MISSING PERSON
South Korea, 2008, 95min
When: Tuesday, May 24 @ 7PM
Doors open at 6:30PM.
Where: Tribeca Cinemas
54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street
One block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops
Price: Free!!!
All seating is first-come, first served.
North American Premiere

Missing Person will be the next film in the Korean Cultural Service's Korean Movie Night Series 3: The Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema. This series focuses on outstanding, recent indie films from the peninsula.

Winner of “Best Film” at the Jeonju Film Festival and the “Artistic Achievement Award” at Greece’s Thessaloniki Film Festival, MISSING PERSON will mess you up. A real estate agent takes out the frustrations of his job and life by regularly tormenting a mentally ill kid in his basement. As violence trickles down from the upper levels of society to the lower, the entire city begins to simmer and boil over with fear, hate and mistrust in this shocking dissection of modern society, leavened with pitch black comedy.

ACF 1019: Review of Korean Indie "Re-encouter"

RE-ENCOUNTER
Directed by MIN Yongkoun
South Korea, 2009, 107 minutes

Re-encounter was shown on Tuesday, May 10th as the first film in Korean Movie Night Series 3: The Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema. The series focuses on independent movies. This one features two fantastic lead performances.

Hyehwa (YOO Da-In) is an assistant to a veterinarian who is a single parent with a young son. In addition to her work in the vet's office, Hyehwa picks up abandoned or stray dogs, several of whom wind up living with her in her small apartment. There she also has a black plastic 35mm film canister in which she saves her fingernail trimmings (?!). In her mid-twenties, she lives a life that, all-in-all, is relatively quiet and uneventful.

Quite unexpectedly, her high school sweetheart, Kim Hanso (YOO Yun-Suk), suddenly reappears. About six years earlier, he had left for Canada when she was pregnant with their child, who died shortly after being born. Now back in Korea, where he injured one of his legs while performing his military service, he tells Hyehwa that their child did not actually die but was secretly adopted. Believing that he has found their daughter, he urges Hyehwa to join him so the three of them can have a "last chance to be together."

This psychological drama is infused with mystery and conflict, as Hyehwa first resists, then gradually succumbs to Hanso's entreaties. Most wonderfully, things she says and does earlier in the film acquire deeper additional meaning as the story progresses.

Re-encounter easily holds its own in any comparison with the best independent films made in the U.S. It's intriguing and, as I said at the start of this review, it has two stellar performances from its leads.

ACF rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars; highly recommended.

The next film in Korean Movie Night Series 3: The Hidden Gems of Korean Cinema will be Missing Person, which will be shown next Tuesday. Info about it in tomorrow's post.

ACF 980: Free Korean animation series concludes with screening of "Audition"

Audition
South Korea, 2008
When: Tuesday, April 19, 2011 at 7:00 pm
(Doors open at 6:30 pm)
Where: Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street @ Canal, NYC
(One block from the A, C, E & 1 train Canal Street stops)
Price: Free!!!!!
Seating: First-come, first served
North American Premiere

Korean Cultural Services current free series Korean Movie Night Series 2: Korean Animation Explodes! concludes next Tuesday with a glitzy, gaudy, crowd-pleasing anime-style manhwa (Korean manga) adaptation. Based on the most popular manhwa of the late 90's, AUDITION is a teen-girl-ready romance about four dudes, all misfits, who form a rock band. All the main characters are already licensed products in Korea and this feature film version of their well-known story took 8 years to make.

(Obviously this is a totally different film from Takashi Miike's 1999 film of the same name in English. Miike's live-action Audition, based on a short novel by Ryu Murakami, is about a widower's search for a second wife and the terrifying consequences than ensue.)

ACF 956: Free screening of "What Is Not Romance" in New York City on April 5th

What Is Not Romance / Romangeun Eobsda
Directed by: Hong Eun-ji, Park Jae-ok, and Soo Kyoung
South Korea, 2007
When: Tuesday, April 5, 2011 at 7:00 pm
(Doors open at 6:30 pm)
Where: Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick Street @ Canal, NYC
(One block from the A, C, E & 1 train Canal Street stops)
Price: Free!!!!!
Seating: First-come, first served

U.S. Premiere

Korean Cultural Services current free series Korean Movie Night Series 2: Korean Animation Explodes! continues with this surprisingly moving animated film about a middle aged couple approaching their anniversary. It's as tender, delicate and subtle as the best art house movie.

Tensions are rising, dinner table conversation is nonexistent and all their romance seems dead. Leaping backwards in time it returns to the beginning of their marriage when they were head over heels in love with each other and traces it to the present when they barely talk and tries to see if there's any way for a couple married for years to get back to the way things were.

ACF 928: Dokdo Concert at Korean Cultural Service on March 21st, 2010 at 7:00 PM

The Korean Cultural Service NY will host the Dokdo Racer project group for their New York City concert titled “Dokdo Concert.” This Korean traditional music group is made up of six Korean university students traveling around the world to promote understanding and rights to the disputed Dokdo Islands currently claimed by both South Korea and Japan.

They continue to spread this message through cultural music events and by holding seminars throughout the world. From February 25th – August 15th, they have plans to take their concert to Peru, Argentina, France, Belgium, China and over to Iran. Their tour will take them across four continents to continue to spread world peace and the fact that the islands of Dokdo are indeed part of South Korea. On March 4th, they were welcomed at Stanford University and this event being held at the Korean Cultural Service will feature the same content presented on that night.

The concert night will be held at the gallery space within the Korean Cultural Service located at 460 Park Ave (north-west corner at East 57th Street), 6th Floor, on March 21st at 7:00 PM. This event will feature performances of Korean traditional music and an open seminar session will follow the performance.

This event is open to the public and reservation is not required. Seating is limited to 100 persons.