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 1264: THE DAY HE ARRIVES @ The Museum of the Moving Images

The Day He Arrives / Book chon bang hyang

Directed by HONG Sang-soo

South Korea, 2011, 79 minutes

Where: The Museum of the Moving Image
35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria, NYC
From midtown, taxi or N/Q Trainoutbound to 36th Avenue

When: Sunday, December 11 @ 4:00PM

Admission: $10 at The Museum of the Moving Image (www.movingimage.us)
and includes museum admissionfor exhibition viewing before 7:00 PM that day.
 

The Korea Society and Museum of the Moving Image present The Day HeArrives, part of their Korean Cinema Now series. In The Day HeArrives, director Hong Sang-soo tells the tale of former filmmakerSungjoon, who journeys to Seoul to meet a friend in Bukchon. After waiting, hewanders and crosses paths with an old friend. In Insadong to drink, he meetsfilm students who recognize him and ask him to join in their fun. He spends thenight at an ex-girlfriend’s, then wanders about Bukchon the following day,crossing paths with the same old friend. 

The Day He Arrives is filledwith nostalgic moments and coincidental run-ins; Hong explores human relationsin all their layered complexities. 

More information is available at www.koreasociety.org. 

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 1211: 2nd Annual KAFFNY URBAN at Big Screen Plaza on November 13th, 2011

KAFFNY URBAN 2011 RETURNS TO BIG SCREEN PLAZA
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2011, 3:00-8:00 PM

For its 2nd annual installment, Korean American Film Festival New York (KAFFNY) is proud to partner again with Big Screen Plaza to present kaffny URBAN, an exciting program of new film, video, media art, animation and live music featuring local and international artists and filmmakers. Located near NYC’s Koreatown on 30th Street and 6th Avenue, the widely popular Big Screen Plaza is an outdoor area boasting a 30-foot LED screen behind the Eventi Hotel. kaffny URBAN takes place on November 13th, 2011 from 3:00 PM to 8:00 PM.

Program highlights include a groundbreaking video work by Nam June Paik celebrating Fluxus as part of Performa Biennale 2011’s Fluxus Weekend in collaboration with White Box; video by Korean multimedia artist Lumpens; short films by IFP emerging filmmaker Thomas Hyungkyun Kim and by popular Korean actress Ku Hye Sun; recent film and video by emerging as well critically acclaimed filmmakers and artists Gina Kim, U-Ram Choe and Helen Park as well as previews of short and feature length films to be featured at the 6th Annual KAFFNY 2012 Film Festival. Live music will include performances by Misnomer(s), Stone Forest Ensemble, Mobius Collective and Vong Pak. DJ Spooky shall host the event and perform with highly acclaimed violinist Eugenia Choi. Visit www.kaffny.com/urban for the complete program schedule and updates.

Attendees will have a variety of dining and drinking options including FoodParc, a luxury gourmet food court opening up to the plaza, and overlooking the plaza Bar Basque offers an eclectic menu and direct views of the outdoor screen. Momofuku Milk Bar will provide a special treat as well as a signed copy of the new Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook.

kaffny URBAN serves as a platform for emerging talent and established artists to gain exposure to new diverse communities in New York City and cross promote current projects.

Free admission. Open to public and for all ages.

Donations at door are tax deductible.

For more information about the event, visit http://kaffny.com/urban/.

kaffny URBAN is presented in association with Big Screen Plaza, Performa 2011, White Box and Electronic Arts Intermix.

About KAFFNY (Korean American Film Festival New York)
KAFFNY is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and artist-run volunteer organization creating an innovative independent platform for other fellow artists in New York City and abroad. KAFFNY was originally founded in 2006 as an international independent film festival in New York City, starting from Korean American stories. The organization has since evolved to incorporate other art mediums and viewpoints, to further integrate the Korean American perspective and bridge

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 1174: DOOMAN RIVER coming to the Korean Economic Institute, Washington, D.C. on October 13th

Dooman River

When: Thursday, October 13th, 2011at 6:00 PM

Where: Korea Economic Institute Conference Room

1800 K Street NW, 10th Floor

Washington, DC 20006

By Metro: Farragut West Orange/Blue Line (18th Street exit); Farragut North Red Line

Admission is free and open to the public but RSVP required.

 

The Korea Society visits Washington, DC, for a special screening of the remarkable Dooman River at the Korea Economic Institute of America. The film won rave reviews among The Korea Society audiences in New York City and Chicago. In this Busan International Film Festival winner, director Zhang Lu examines a friendship between two boys in Northeast China, one a North-Korean refugee, and the challenges they face when more refugees arrive. Light fare is on offer prior to the screening.

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 1171: THE UNJUST coming to The Museum of the Moving Image

The Unjust

Directed by Ryoo Seung-wan
When: Sunday, October 9th, 2011 at 4:00 PM

Where: The Museum of the Moving Image

35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria, Queens
From midtown, taxi or N/Q Train outbound to 36th Avenue 

Film is free with admission to the Museum

The Korea Society and the newly renovated Museum of the Moving Image present The Unjust, part of Korean Cinema Now, on New York City’s hottest state-of-the-art screen. Earlier this year, the Museum of the Moving Image and The Korea Society embarked on an exciting run of new work, with highlights from the Busan International Film Festival, that has been warmly received by audiences and the film media.

The Unjust is director Ryoo Seung-wan’s dramatic take on police corruption and features an investigator on the hot seat and a vindictive prosecutor. It is his most successful project yet, earning its place in the top-ten box office list. Director Ryoo is considered one of the best action-film directors in Korea. He debuted in 1996 with the short film Transmutated Head, and went on to make features including Die Bad in 1998, No Blood No Tears in 2002, Arahan in 2004, and City of Violence in 2006.

ACF 1168: Rolling Home with a Bull

Lee Hyun-soo (left) and Choi Sun-ho

Rolling Home with a Bull / So-wa Ham-kke Yeo-haeng-ha-neun Beop

Directed by Yim Soon-rye

With Kim Young-pil, Kong Hyo-jin, Mek- bo

South Korea, 2010, 108 minutes

Rolling Home with a Bull, also known as “Travel with a Cow,” is a most unusual Road Movie in that it's about a man and his bull.

Choi Sun-ho (Kim Young-pil) is an unmarried man in his late thrities who works on his parents' farm. Educated and a writer of poetry, he's fed up with having to care for and clean up after the family's bull, which is used for plowing the family's hillside fields. He urges that they sell the bull and buy a tractor to modernize their farming, but his father adamantly refuses.

So Sun-ho makes off with the bull in the family truck early one morning, just as his father wakes up, sees what is happening, and gives ineffectual chase on foot. While on the road, Sun-ho hears from Lee Hyun-soo (Kong Hyo-jin), a woman he knew in his youth but last saw seven or eight years earlier. She tells him that her husband Peter has just died in an accident. He joins her at the wake where it's just the two of them. Hyun-soo at times calls Sun-ho "Paul." Seems that at one time all three were good friends and they took on the names of the American folk group Peter, Paul, and Mary. Sun-ho/Paul had loved Hyun-soo/Mary and never really got over the her marrying Peter.

Sun-ho continues his journey, trying to get the best price for the bull, which gets "car sick" and weak from standing in the back of the truck for hours. The grand-daughter of the veterinarian who diagnosed the creatures infirmity asks Sun-ho his family name, then names the bull Choi Han-soo.

Leading Han-soo through the streets of a city

Sun-ho and Choi Han-soo are forced to interrupt their travels so Han-soo can rest periodically, as well as for vehicular repairs and other setbacks. Hyun-soo, dressed in mourning black keeps re-entering their lives, as does a religious personage from the "Oh My God Temple." There are also calls from Sun-ho's father, who calls him a cattle thief and demands that he immediately return home with the bull.

With dream sequences and fantasies, Sun-ho's quest becomes more and more bewildering, and he finds it increasingly difficult to actually sell dear old Choi Han-soo.

Rolling Home With a Bull is an off-beat comedy, to be sure. It's also delightful and touching.

ACF Rating: 3 out of 4 stars, a good, solid film that's well worth a viewing. 

Rolling Home With a Bull was a co-presentation of The Korea Society and MoMA as part of the film series Yeonghwa: Korean Film Today, 2011, which runs through this Sunday, Ocotober 2nd. For the schedule, individual film descriptions, and to order tickets, visit either The Korea Society or MoMA.

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 1120: ContemporAsian film series at MoMA NYC continues with PARK Jung-Bum's "The Journals of Musan."

In the monthly exhibition ContemporAsian, MoMA showcases films that get little exposure outside of their home countries or on the international festival circuit, but that engage the various styles, histories, and changes in Asian cinema. Beginning August 17, MoMA presents a weeklong run of South Korean director Park Jung-Bum's The Journals of Musan (2010). Details here.

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 1105: Free screening of "The Good, the Bad, the Weird" July 27th

The Good, the Bad, the Weird
Directed by Kim Jee woon
South Korea, 2008, 139 minutes
Where: The Museum of the Moving Image
Outdoor Cinema 2011
Socrates Sculpture Park,
Vernon Boulevard, Long Island City
(N or Q train to Broadway,
eight blocks west at Vernon Boulevard and the East River,
or 8-10 minutes by taxi from The Korea Society)
When: Wednesday, July 27, 2011 at 7 PM
Film Begins at Sunset
Free Admission through The Museum of the Moving Image.

Join The Korea Society and the Museum of The Moving Image for a cinematic wild ride from director Kim Jee-woon’s The Good, the Bad, the Weird. Set in the 1930s Manchurian desert, where lawlessness rules and ethnic groups clash, three Korean men fatefully meet on a train: a bounty hunter, the leader of a gang of bandits, and a train robber with nine lives. The three strangers chase across Manchuria to take possession of a valuable map. In Korean with subtitles.

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 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 1045: "Dooman River" to screen June 26th at The Museum of the Moving Image

Photo courtesy of Hamptons International Film Festival

Dooman River
Directed by Zhang Lu
South Korea, 2010, 90 minutes
When: Sunday, June 26 at 6:30 PM
Where: The Museum of the Moving Image
35th Avenue at 37th Street, Astoria
From midtown, taxi or N/Q Train outbound to 36th Avenue
Price: $10.00 film only; free with museum admission

Winner of the 2010 Pusan International Film Festival NETPAC Award, Director Zhang Lu’s film explores the friendship between two boys, one a DPRK defector who has crossed the Dooman River and the other an ethnic Korean living in China. When more refugees arrive, their tranquil existence is shattered. Zhang Lu’s careful minimalism infuses emotion and touches the hearts of film-goers. Zhang Lu’s first short film, Eleven, appeared at several international films festivals, including the Venice International Film Festival, Busan Asian Short Film Festival, and the Toronto International Film Festival.

His first feature film, Tang Poetry,’ won the Locarno International Film Festival in 2004. His next film, Grain in Ear,’ won the Grand Prix-New Currents Award at the Pusan International Film Festival in 2005. He also directed Hyazgar (2007), Chongging (2008), and Iri (2008). This screening is part of the Korean Cinema Now showcase, co-presented by the Museum of the Moving Image and The Korea Society.

A co-presentation of The Korea Society and
The Museum of the Moving Image
Part of Korean Cinema Now
Supported by Global Film Initiative

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.