London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Korean films at Queer East 2024

Date: Friday 19 April - Sunday 28 April 2024
Venue:
Various venues

Tickets: Various | Ticket links below
Still from A Song Sung Blue
The opening film of the festival, A Song Sung Blue by Chinese director Geng Zihan, features a Korean Chinese character

After the Korea focus in last year’s festival it was perhaps a little bit to be expected that this year there would be less in the way of Korean content.  So we have one South Korean feature film from 1967 (directed by Choi Eun-hee) and a handful of shorts; plus a 2016 feature by Korean American filmmaker Andrew Ahn – after which you can expose all in a Hackney community sauna.

A Princess’s One-Sided Love (공주님의 짝사랑)

Dir: Choi Eun-hee (1967, 94mins)
Friday 19 April 2024, 6:30pm @ICA | Book tickets here

A Princess’s One-Sided Love

The Joseon era: Suk-gyeong is the youngest daughter of the late king Hyojong (d. 1659), whose brother Hyeonjong now sits on the throne; her five sisters have been married off to worthy but dull court nobles, a fate she is determined to avoid. So after meeting a handsome young scholar, Suk-yeong resolves to search for him, contriving to leave the palace grounds in which she has been confined her whole life. In this lively costume drama, director Choi Eun-hee, the third woman to direct films in South Korea, takes aim at the stifling class and gender structures navigated by the stubbornly romantic Suk-yeong. A Princess’ One-Sided Love is ultimately a film about role-play in all its myriad forms: a sly comic testament to what can be learned by dressing up.

Steamy Intimacies: A Queer East Sauna Experience

Monday 22 April 2024, 6pm @Hackney Wick Community Sauna | Book tickets here

Join us for a special screening at Hackney Wick Community Sauna Baths, with a double bill of short film Who Can Predict What Will Move You (2020) followed by Spa Night (2016). These two films both showcase nascent queer intimacy and sexuality emerging through water, fluids, and gloopiness. In Who Can Predict What Will Move You, we accompany two boys on their last night together in Brooklyn. In Spa Night, we follow a closeted teenager beginning his part-time job at a Korean spa in Los Angeles.

After the screening, you can let off some steam in the saunas, or cool yourself down in the plunge pools! The event will be catered by juk san, who will be serving congee, sweet soup, and fried dough sticks.

Spa Night

Dir. Andrew Ahn (2016, 96 mins)

Spa Night

Like many first generation immigrants, David Cho serves as the intermediary between his parents’ insular Koreatown life in Los Angeles and the frenetic landscape of the city. When the family restaurant is forced to close, the balance of the household is threatened and tension mounts at home.

In an unfamiliar twist on more familiar immigrant stories, David does not accept his parents’ dreams for him to pursue an education and instead decides to help his family make ends meet by secretly taking a job at a Korean spa. There, David finds himself suddenly exposed to the clash between traditional Korean culture and the underground world of gay hook-ups. In Spa Night, Andrew Ahn directs a family story, exploring the elusiveness of personal identity and relationship to family traditions in the contemporary world.

The shorts

A Thousand Words Unspoken

Monday, 22 April 2024, 9:00pm  @Genesis Cinema | Book tickets here

A series of queer shorts that delve into family secrets, buried pasts, silent longings and lost futures. In these poignant films, the characters grapple with unchosen paths and bittersweet moments of newfound connection. Sculpting into shape what cannot be said in words, the filmmakers capture the crossing over of parallel worlds and the lasting marks we leave in each other’s lives. Contains:

The Nape

Dir Kim Yu-ra (2023, 26min)

The Nape

Da-ye quits her job as a teacher and returns to her hometown. They begin to help their mother, who has been forced to close the English academy she runs because of the COVID-19 outbreak, when they come across a student who is two months behind in his payments.

Stranger Than Fiction

Tuesday 23 April 2024, 8:45pm @Genesis Cinema | Book tickets here

Queer connections can be found in the most unlikely of places, through secret codes and subtle signals, queer people have always been able to find each other and form communities. This collection of shorts encapsulates the excitement and mystery of meeting someone new, opening up possibilities for self-discovery and reinvention. Contains:

My Heart is going to Explode!

Dir Jung Inhyuk (2023, 20min)

My Heart is going to Explode!

After a love affair full of gaslighting comes to an end, Soojin is haunted by the green-lit girl she slept with in a drunken stupor the night before. Her body was glowing; she literally emitted green light. Soojin’s friends scold her for losing her mind, but suddenly a UFO appears in the skies of Seoul.

Harvesting the Fruits of Monstrosity

Thursday 25 April 2024, 8:30pm @Prince Charles Cinema | Buy tickets here

In these works by queer Southeast and East Asian artists, the ‘monster’ figure is a rejection of assimilationist expectations to be normal, legible, or obedient. Whether chaotic or gentle, horny or yearning, haunting or shocking, these ‘monsters’ relish in the opportunities to reworld that being an outcast provides. Reconciling with the monstrosity within is catalysed into a beacon of dissenting hope, a chance for embodied catharsis, and a survival strategy towards liberation. Contains

I Am a Horse

Dir Chaerin Im (2022, 8 min)

What happens when the magnificent she-horse arrives to the Korean patriarchal society?

Welcome to Neverland

Sunday 28 April 2024, 2pm @Rio Cinema | Book tickets here

Vampiric schoolgirls, crocodilian men, and spectral lovers populate this eerie programme, in which myths, the supernatural, and alternative universes spark the queer imagination. Blurring boundaries between reality and fantasy, the filmmakers delve into weird and wonderful experiences that ignite the possibility of change: personal, political, and philosophical. To be queer is, literally, to be strange or odd, which here serves as a means of challenging cultural understandings of gender and sexuality. Through blood, fish scales, and sexy copies of Hegel’s oeuvre, the films in this collection make otherworldliness a point of pride. Contains:

Their Universe

Dir Han Jeong-gil (2023, 16 min)

Jun returns to Earth as a ghost to say goodbye to his lover.