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Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Bong Joon-ho month at the KCC

Bong Joon-hoThis month gives you an opportunity to see two of the best films to have come out of Korea – or anywhere – this century.

Both star Song Kang-ho, both are by director Bong Joon-ho, who debuted in 2000 with the amazing Barking Dogs Never Bite.

On 9 October, there’s the film which provided koreanfilm.org.uk with its masthead, one of the few films which I have spontaneously applauded at the end: Memories of Murder (2003), based on a true story:

Memories of Murder

Synopsis
1986, Kyonggi Province. A young woman is found brutally raped and murdered. A couple of months later, several other rapes and murders occur under similar circumstances. In a country that has never known such crimes, the dark whispers about a serial killer grow louder. A special task force is set up in the area. A local detective, PARK Doo-man, is joined by a detective from Seoul who requested to be assigned to the case, SEO Tae-yoon. Finding the killer grows more and more difficult, however, driving the detectives to ever greater despair.

Slightly less fact-based is Bong’s 2006 hit The Host, to be screened on 23 October:

The Host

Synopsis
Gang-du is a dim-witted man working at his father’s tiny snack bar near the Han River. One day, Gang-du’s one and only daughter Hyun-seo comes back from school irritated. She is angry at her uncle, Nam-il, who visited her school as her guardian shamelessly drunk. Ignoring her father’s excuses for Nam-il, Hyun-seo is soon engrossed in her aunt Nam-joo’s archery tournament on TV. Meanwhile, outside of the snack bar, people are fascinated by an unidentified object hanging onto a bridge. In an instant, the object reveals itself as a terrifying creature turning the riverbank into a gruesome sea of blood… Amid the chaos, Hyun-seo is helplessly snatched up by the creature right before Gang-du’s eyes. These unforeseen circumstances render the government powerless to act. But receiving a call of help from Hyun-seo, the once-ordinary citizen Gang-du and his family are thrust into a battle with the monster to rescue their beloved Hyun-seo.

If you haven’t seen it already, you should go along.

As with other events at the KCC, pre-registration is necessary

Links

7 thoughts on “Bong Joon-ho month at the KCC

  1. The Host was a great movie to experience on the big screen. I’m going to watch Bong Joon-ho’s first directorial effort since The Host which is a segment in the omnibus movie “Tokyo!” called “Shaking Tokyo” being shown at the BFI Film Festival.

  2. Thanks for pointing this out Raku. The search engine on the BFI site is much worse than last year, so I’d completely missed that some work by Bong was making an appearance.

  3. Oh there are tickets still available for Tokyo! and The Good, The Bad, The Weird albeit not great ones for the latter (to be expected I guess)……I have good seats for both!

  4. I’m waiting for the Good Bad Weird screening in the Barbican with Director Q&A 😉

    But what a pain in the backside about the timing of Tokyo! Like so many films at the BFI festival, the scheduling is geared to those with an extremely flexible lifestyle.

    So glad the Korean film festival in November is sensibly scheduled.

  5. Damn that’s a kick in the teeth, if I had known that I would have waited…….oh well if it’s good who says I can’t go again!

    I remembered that Tokyo! is being shown on November 15th at BFI southbank, search for onedotzero on the BFi site, tickets go live for non members on Friday and there’s still quite a few seats left.

    I would’ve gone to the Saturday screening of Tokyo! but when the movie finishes there is train track maintenance making it nearly impossible for me to get home 🙁

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