BFI Flare launched yesterday with a humdinger of an opening movie: Andrew Ahn’s reimagining of Ang Lee’s 1993 The Wedding Banquet. Ahn’s partner in creating this update, James Schamus, also co-wrote Ang Lee’s version. While the original film features a single gay couple and a marriage of convenience, the reboot has two gay couples, which … [Read More]
Category: BFI Flare
Korean films at BFI Flare 2025
This year at BFI Flare we have three films by Korean directors and one by a Korean American. The latter – The Wedding Banquet by director Andrew Ahn – has been chosen to open the festival and includes Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung among the cast. Londoners were introduced to Andrew Ahn’s work at Queer East last … [Read More]
2024 in review part 3 – the film festivals and other screenings
In a somewhat disappointing filmic year in Korea, in London we could nevertheless celebrate the fact that a handful of the latest big-budget Korean movies continue to have limited-scope theatrical releases. In 2024 we got director Heo Myung-haeng’s contribution to the Roundup franchise, and the final instalment of Kim Han-min’s Yi Sun-shin trilogy, plus Jang … [Read More]
Korean films at BFI Flare 2024
Last year BFI Flare had a Korean focus, giving us four feature films and a short. It’s only natural that this year’s offering won’t quite match up to last year’s feast, but still we have one feature and a short: Heavy Snow (폭설) Dir: Yun Su-ik (2023, 77 mins) Cast: Han So-hee, Han Hae-in Monday … [Read More]
Korean movies at BFI Flare
BFI Flare, London’s LGBTQIA+ film festival, this year has four Korean feature films plus one short. There is also a first-come, first-served discussion with some of the Korean film makers. Ticket links – and links to full details with movie synopsis on the BFI website – are below. Discussion: Spotlight on South Korea Saturday 18 … [Read More]
A Distant Place screens at BFI Flare
Jin-Woo lives a deliberately quiet life in rural Korea, working as a shepherd and looking after his young niece Seol. Though Seol is approaching school age, Jin-Woo keeps their contact with the outside world to a minimum, save for the family that employs him. But everything changes when his college boyfriend Hyeon-min and estranged sister … [Read More]
Lee Hyun-ju’s Our Love Story screens at BFI Flare
Coming up this week at BFI Flare, London’s LGBT film festival. It is expected that the director will make an appearance at one of the screenings. Our Love Story (연애담) Director Lee Hyun-ju (2016) Producer Kim Bo-ra With Lee Sang-hee, Ryu Sun-young South Korea 99min Friday 17 March 2017 14:00 NFT3 Buy tickets Saturday 18 March … [Read More]
LLGFF Festival Film Review: Leesong Hee-il’s White Night trilogy – seek it out if you can
It was not so long ago that writing an article on queer cinema in Korea was a real struggle, for want of source material. Adam Hartzell does an excellent job in his 2002 Film Journal article Queer Pal for the Straight Gal, referencing films such as Wanee and Junah, Bungee Jump, Memento Mori and others. … [Read More]
Lee Song Hee-il trilogy to screen at the BFI
Last year at the London Korean Film Festival we were scheduled to see White Night by Lee Song Hee-il (이송희일), but at the last minute the film was pulled so that it could have its European debut at the Berlin Festival in 2013. But now in compensation we are to see the film, together with … [Read More]
The divers of Jeju-do
LKL digests Barbara Hammer’s documentary “Diving Women of Jeju-do”, which screened in a recent film festival in London. Barbara Hammer’s brief documentary Diving Women of Jeju-do (2007) provides an intimate portrait of Cheju-do’s famous diving women, the haenyo. Barbara Hammer goes diving with the women, and took trouble to get to know their ways. She … [Read More]
Upcoming Haenyo film screening
Notice of a screening of a documentary on Cheju Island’s famous haenyeo (해녀) in a double bill of groundbreaking documentaries by celebrated lesbian experimental filmmaker Barbara Hammer, as part of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival: For hundreds of years women on the South Korean island of Jeju-do have sustained themselves by diving to … [Read More]