Director Park Hong-min discusses A Fish and Alone, tracing their roots in loneliness, memory, and self-analysis. He addresses the film education system in Korea and the struggles of truly independent filmmaking, and talks about casting choices, shamanism, long takes, handmade 3D and a commitment to personal questions over commercial formulas.Director Park Hong-min discusses A Fish and Alone, tracing their roots in loneliness, memory, and self-analysis. He addresses the film education system in Korea and the struggles of truly independent filmmaking, and talks about casting choices, shamanism, long takes, handmade 3D and a commitment to personal questions over commercial formulas. [Read More]
Year: 2016 (page 3)
BFI Festival Film Review: Na Hong-jin’s The Wailing
The Wailing is a punishing, relentlessly tense horror thriller that thrives on ambiguity and sensory overload. Na Hong-jin toys with belief, suspicion and endurance, delivering a prolonged roller-coaster of dread, brutal set pieces and exhausting climaxes that leave viewers shaken, uncertain and deeply unsettled. [Read More]
Gangnam Style remembered on Strictly
Thanks to would-be Labour finance minister Ed Balls for brightening up our dull Autumn on the BBC’s celebrity talent show Strictly Come Dancing. Consistently at the bottom of the scoreboard, he is saved by the popular vote. In the most recent episode he had the guts to do a Gangnam Style inspired Salsa, choreographed (with … [Read More]
Review: Bongsu Park’s Crossing Over – Ritual of Grief
Bongsu Park’s two-part work, Crossing Over – Ritual of Grief, is an ambitious piece lasting for almost two hours which saw its first performance spread over two weekends in two different locations during August. It blends contemporary electronic music with traditional Korean music, and contemporary dance with traditional Korean dance such as Salpuri. Appropriately enough … [Read More]
Rituals, Reflections, and 3D: Director Park Hong-min on A Fish
Director Park Hong-min discusses the shamanistic inspirations behind his debut film, A Fish. He explains his unconventional use of 3D to create a distorted reality, the symbolic role of mirrors and doppelgängers, and the influence of Jindo’s healing rituals. Park also details his collaborative approach to the film’s restrained, atmospheric sound design. [Read More]
Two leaders and their shoes
A couple of photographs doing the rounds of social media this week: Sources: Park Geun-hye | Kim Jong-un [Read More]
Lee Jang-ho interview: censorship, sexuality and resistance in Korean cinema
Lee Jang-ho discusses state censorship from the colonial era through the 1990s, the enforced transformation of Declaration of Idiot, and his turn to sexuality as a tool of anti-establishment expression in the 1980s. He reflects on Shin Sang-ok’s abduction, North Korean filmmaking, and argues that contemporary Korea still harshly penalises social critique. [Read More]
Brief festival film review: Eoh Woo Dong
Lee Chang-ho (이장호) Eoh Woo Dong (어우동, 1985, 110 mins). Review by Robert Cottingham. Eoh Woo Dong translates as “entertainer,” a rough approximation of the duties of 14th-century Korean courtesan Eoh Yoon Chang. After a lifetime “in service,” Eoh Yoon Chang retires to a faraway village. Meanwhile, her powerful father, ashamed of his daughter’s lifestyle, … [Read More]
An interview with Jung Yewon
There’s a good interview with Jung Yewon, translator of Hwang Jung-eun’s One Hundred Shadows, in The London Magazine. [T]he image of misty rain, “slender as spider’s silk,” is something that has stayed with me as I read, translated, and reread the book, with the ambience of a dream it spun. [Read More]
Actor Baek Yoon-sik interview: career flow, creative choice, defining roles
Actor Baek Yoon-sik reflects on moving between theatre, television, and cinema, returning to film with Save the Green Planet. He discusses choosing challenging roles, respecting scripts, limited improvisation, and working on politically and socially charged films (such as The President’s Last Bang), framing acting as creative labour shaped by history, collaboration, and personal judgment. [Read More]
Event news: the 1st Global North Korea Freedom Week
News of next week’s Global North Korea Freedom Week, said to be the first, arrived in my inbox recently. Don’t ask me to interpret how the timetable below works. Perhaps a more accurate version can be found on the www.ifreenk.com website, but my mcaffee web filter won’t let me go there. 1st Global North Korea … [Read More]
Gig Review: Kyungso Park and Andy Sheppard in the Albert Hall’s Elgar Room
Recent collaborations between British and Korean musicians have not always been successful. A planned experiment between jazz trumpeter Guy Barker and Samulnori founder Kim Duk-soo never happened because the latter went awol when Barker came to visit. Instead, having already been booked for the 2008 Dano Festival in Trafalgar Square, Barker appeared briefly on stage … [Read More]
Brief Festival Film Review: Kai
Lee Sung-gang (이성강): Kai (카이, 2016, 96 mins) Review by Robert Cottingham Snow Queen Hattan casts a spell over the peaceful village where Kai lives, and covers everything in ice. The River Spirit who is the protector of the village gives the brave young Kai the only key to fighting off Hattan and asks him … [Read More]
The Wailing (곡성, 2016) review: a relentless descent into fear and paranoia
The Wailing takes director Na Hong-jin’s almost trademark intricate, pulse-pounding narrative intensity and ramps it up yet further with palpable character fear, paranoia and desperation. Thriller by name, utterly thrilling in nature, this darkly violent, three-pronged horror ‘whodunit’ is a worthy successor to The Chaser and The Yellow Sea. [Read More]
Festival film review: Crush and Blush
Lee Kyoung-mi (이경미): Crush and Blush (미쓰 홍당무, 2008) Review by Robert Cottingham. Right near the beginning of Crush and Blush, the main character Mi-seok stands digging a deep hole in a schoolyard. I thought that it was a punishment used in South Korean schools, but if not it could be a visual metaphor for … [Read More]
Jung Woo-sung and Kim Sung-soo interview: “Hyung, this is really tough!”
Actor Jung Woo-sung and director Kim Sung-soo discuss Asura: The City of Madness, focusing on its fictional setting, extreme characters, and themes of power, corruption, and moral collapse. They reflect on their long collaboration, challenging performances, shifting career choices, and the responsibility of senior artists to support new filmmakers. [Read More]