Books on Film

Chung Hye-seung’s monograph on Kim Ki-duk is a must-read, and readable, study of Korea’s maverick director

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by Philip Gowman on 24 February, 2013

in Book Reviews | Books on Film | Kim Ki-duk

Chung Hye-seung: Kim Ki-duk (Contemporary Film Directors series) University of Illinois Press, 2012, 161pp When is the right time to publish a monograph on a living film director? With the KOFIC collection of books, the schedule appears more driven by wanting to get a complete set of directors covered as soon as possible. For a [...]

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Kyung-hyun Kim’s Virtual Hallyu: more approachable than Remasculinization, but still tough going

by Philip Gowman 12 December 2012
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Kyung-hyun Kim: Virtual Hallyu — Korean Cinema of the Global Era Duke University Press Books, 2011. 280pp On Planet Deleuze, a world in a parallel universe inhabited by hyper-intelligent philosophers, psychoanalysts and cultural studies scholars, Kyung-hyun Kim’s second book on Korean film will be voraciously devoured, as no doubt his previous book was. Back on [...]

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New book on Kim Ki-duk coming to stores this week

by Philip Gowman 20 February 2012
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Last year saw the comeback of Kim Ki-duk, winning the Un Certain Regard prize at Cannes with Arirang. The release of a new book on one of Korea’s most controversial directors is therefore timely. Coming to Amazon UK this week then, and to Amazon US last month, is a new book on Kim Ki-duk from [...]

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Directory of World Cinema: South Korea launched

by Philip Gowman 10 February 2012
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I see that @ColetteBalmain‘s Directory of World Cinema: South Korea is up for preorder on Amazon.co.uk (http://t.co/0LpRIp2s) No pressure then, Colette.

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A new Kyung-hyun Kim book hits the stores soon

by Philip Gowman 3 January 2012
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I confess that I didn’t much enjoy Kyung-hyun Kim’s first book – The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema – but I’ll still be getting his new one, Virtual Hallyu – Korean Cinema of the Global Era, which is available from Amazon later this month.

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Discovering Korean Cinema book launch closes the 2010 festival

by Colette Balmain 31 January 2011
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Colette Balmain reports from the book launch of Discovering Korean Cinema at the Korean Cultural Centre UK Tuesday 23 Nov 6pm For the launch of the book, Discovering Korean Cinema (edited by Daniel Martin and Mark Morris, The Korean Cultural Centre: London, 2010), both the editors, Daniel Martin and Mark Morris, and one of the [...]

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Jinhee Choi: The South Korean Film Renaissance

by Philip Gowman 16 December 2010
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Jinhee Choi: The South Korean Film Renaissance Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs Wesleyan University Press, 2010 There seems to be an ever-growing pile of available books of Korean film, with more to come over the next two years. This is testament to the established interest in Asian film and the growth of media studies as an [...]

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Darcy Paquet: New Korean Cinema

by Philip Gowman 6 December 2010
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Darcy Paquet: New Korean Cinema – Breaking the Waves Wallflower Press, 2009 This brief introduction to Korean film is packed with insight based on Darcy Paquet’s unique viewpoint on Korean film. [1] Do not expect to find lots of analysis of individual films, or discussion of cinematography, lighting or editing techniques. But what you have [...]

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Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity

by Philip Gowman 21 November 2010
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Deleuze, Cinema and National Identity: Narrative Time in National Contexts. http://amzn.to/azAXRL Looks like one film book I'd really hate, even though it discusses Lee Chang-dong’s Peppermint Candy. #

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Korea Yearbook 2008

by Philip Gowman 14 March 2009
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Korea Yearbook 2008 Eds Rüdiger Frank, James E Hoare, Patrick Köllner, Susan Pares Brill, 2009 The 2008 Korea Yearbook – Politics, Economy and Society does many of the things that a reader might expect: it contains a collection of papers which review the key developments in its chosen subject areas for the past year. At [...]

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The wave that never was?

by Philip Gowman 8 February 2009
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Mark Russell’s book is a fun and informative account of the Korean entertainment industry. Read a full-length review.

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Kim Young-jin: Lee Chang-dong

by Philip Gowman 21 September 2007
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(Seoul Selection, 2007) I can imagine that there was a certain amount of discussion about the timing of this book. After a break of some years — enforced by his stint as Roh Moo-hyun’s first Minister for Culture and Tourism — the well-regarded director Lee Chang-dong was active again. His new film, with two of [...]

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Kim Hong-joon: Kim Ki-young

by Philip Gowman 22 May 2007
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(Seoul Selection, 2007) KOFIC’s enterprise in bringing out this series is greatly to be welcomed. This current instalment is particularly welcome as English-language materials on Kim Ki-young are few and far between. (Chris Berry’s web project, House of Kim Ki-young, seems to be out of action at the moment. There’s Kim Kyung-hyun’s essay comparing Housemaid [...]

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Chung Sung-il: Im Kwon-taek

by Philip Gowman 20 May 2007
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(Seoul Selection, 2007) Together with its sister publication, the work on Kim Ki-young, this book is the fourth and fifth in KOFIC’s series of monographs on individual Korean directors. It’s also the first time that KOFIC has charged for them. The first three were available for free download from the KOFIC website: these are only [...]

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Lee Young-il and Choe Young-chol: The History of Korean Cinema

by Philip Gowman 29 April 2007
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Jimdoondang Publishing Co, Seoul, 1988 I’m sure this book has a readership, but I’m not sure what it is. It is so badly written that it encourages skim-reading and thus is not particularly attractive for the general reader; while the index is so poor that its use as an academic reference tool is limited. As [...]

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Adrien Gombeaud and others: Kim Ki-duk

by Philip Gowman 28 December 2006
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(Dis Voir, 2006) Adrien Gombeaud / Anaïd Demir / Cédric Lagandré / Catherine Capdeville-Zeng / Daniele Rivière The best French organists are known for their improvisation skills. Suggest a theme, and they will start a journey from it, sometimes referring back to it but often exploring strange new vistas completely unrelated to it. The essays [...]

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Im Kwon-taek – The making of a Korean National Cinema

by Philip Gowman 1 December 2006
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David James & Kyung-hun Kim: (Wayne State UP, 2001) A wide-ranging collection of essays which usefully documents Im’s importance as a filmmaker, from his first attempt in the early 60s to his latest (at the time this book was published, Chunhyang was the most recent). Kim Kyung-hyun’s lucid account of Im’s career put in the [...]

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Fetishes, Phalluses and Mini-skirts

by Philip Gowman 13 September 2006
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Kyung-Hyun Kim: The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema Duke University Press, 2004 This book is for a restricted academic readership only. I can empathise with the feeling of inadequacy, crisis and male lack which, according to Kim, plagues the majority of protagonists in Korean film (though there is a difference between me and them, namely that [...]

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Korean Film – History, Resistance and Democratic Imagination

by Philip Gowman 9 June 2006
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Eungjun Min, Jinsook Joo, Han Ju Kwak (Praeger, 2003) Proof that an academic book on film does not have to be unreadable; and apart from the first chapter this book is accessible to the general reader. The first chapter can, however, be safely ignored, as it seems simply to serve to establish that the authors [...]

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Hyangjin Lee: Contemporary Korean Cinema

by Philip Gowman 10 May 2006

(Manchester UP, 2000) If you can cut through the occasionally inelegant prose this book is a very interesting study, particularly in its inclusion of North Korean films. Recommended. Links: Read a proper review of this over at the Korean Studies portal Buy Contemporary Korean Cinema: Culture, Identity and Politics at Amazon

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South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema

by Philip Gowman 10 April 2006

Nancy Abelmann, Kathleen McHugh (eds) (Wayne State UP, 2005) On my reading pile (31 March 2006). Will report once I’ve read it. Links: Beat me to it. Buy South Korean Golden Age Melodrama: Gender, Genre, and National Cinema at Amazon

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