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Lee Chang-dong

This is the first full monograph on the widely acclaimed South Korean director Lee Chang-dong (born 1954), whose 2018 film Burning was the first Korean production shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

With his six features made since taking up filmmaking at the age of 43 (after working as a novelist), Lee has distinguished himself as an uncompromising auteur through his tightly wrought narratives that depict human suffering taken to its limits.

His films tend to follow conventional genre structures, including thriller and melodrama, but are consistently surprising in both their emotional subtlety and their characters’ confrontations with Korean history and politics.

The latest in a monograph series from Dis Voir, the book was designed by Lee himself, who selected and arranged all the images, and includes an interview with the director along with several scholarly essays on his work.

Source: publisher’s website

LKL says:

You are recommended to try to look at a library copy before you buy. We found this publisher’s Kim Ki-duk monograph to be seriously unenlightening. Based on this Amazon review the Lee Chang-dong book could be along the same lines.

External links:

* Where the book is available from a number of sources, they are prioritised as follows: (1) Amazon UK site, or Bookshop.org for the more recent uploads (2) Amazon US site (3) Other sites in US or Europe, including second-hand outlets (4) LTI Korea, where the title is advertised as available from there (5) Onlines stores in Korea. Links to Bookshop.org and Amazon UK site contain an affiliate code which, should you make a purchase, gives a small commission to LKL at no additional cost to you.