The only time I’ve heard Baik Hyun-jhin perform live he had his head in a fireplace and was making moaning sounds up a chimney. He can make a performance of anything. His bandmate Bang Jun-seok has composed the soundtracks for movies from …ing to Battleship Island. Their 2015 debut album together, Your Hands, is well […]
Category: London East Asia Film Festival (page 2)
LEAFF, LKFF and the battle for our diaries
The film festival season is upon us, and this requires some serious diary planning. Fortunately the BFI London Film Festival remains serenely distant from the ignominious tangle caused by the collision of LEAFF and LKFF. With four titles scheduled earlier in the month, including the movie that I’ve been most looking forward to all year […]
London East Asia Film Festival 2017: full programme details
Yesterday the London East Asia Film Festival released details of the films it would be showing at its 2017 iteration. Plenty of Korean interest, as you might expect, with a focus on the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (last year, if you remember, they had a Jeonju spotlight). The opening gala screening, Hwang Dong-hyuk’s The […]
Festival Film review: Spirit’s Homecoming
With the signing of the Comfort Women “deal” between Japan and South Korea in December 2015 – a deal signed without consulting the victims themselves – the issue of the wartime sex slaves once again came to the fore. While the inter-governmental negotiators were reaching the final stages of their deal-making, Cho Jung-rae’s long-term project […]
Park Chan-wook talks about Handmaiden, octopuses and more
I’ve now lost count of the number of times that Park Chan-wook has come to London. But it’s always nice to see him, especially when there’s his latest film to enjoy as part of a retrospective of his work at the London East Asia Film Festival. We got to see the amazing Handmaiden at the BFI […]
Korean films in LEAFF’s Competition, Official Selection and Stories of Women sections
The 2016 London East Asia Film Festival has a number of strands. We’ve already posted details of the movies screening in the Park Chan-wook retrospective and the Jeonju International Film Festival Focus. So here are the Korean movies featuring in the other strands, the broader East Asian cinema sections, listed in order of screening at […]
Brief review: Park Chan-wook’s Handmaiden
I’ll leave others to do the detailed review of Park Chan-wook’s Handmaiden (아가씨), which screened at the London Film Festival this week and which will return later in the month at the London East Asia Film Festival. Suffice it to say that it’s gorgeous-looking, both in terms of costume and interiors, great story-telling and totally […]
LEAFF 2016 focuses on Jeonju film fest
One of the strands to be introduced by the London East Asia Film Festival is a focus on individual festivals in the region. In collaboration with the Institute for Contemporary Arts, who will be screening this strand on Saturday and Sunday mornings during the festival, the focus for the first year is the Jeonju International […]
Festival news: the first edition of LEAFF announces its programme
The London East Asia Film Festival announced the full programme of its first full “edition” this week, and there is a very strong Korean selection. As already announced, there will be a retrospective of one of Korea’s best known directors, Park Chan-wook, along with a screening of his most recent movie. In addition, there are […]
Event news: Park Chan-wook retrospective @LEAFF 2016
The London East Asia Film Festival, in its first full outing (20-30 October), hosts a Park Chan-wook retrospective, including a screening of his 2016 movie Handmaiden. The director will be present for that screening, and to introduce a remastering of his Lady Vengeance. It’s nice that a few of his shorts will be screened as […]
Festival Film Review: Hong Won-chan’s The Office at LEAFF
The Office was the second of two Korean films to screen at the 0th edition of the London East Asia Film Festival, and came with strong credentials. Though a debut feature by Hong Won-chan, he was the scriptwriter for the well received Yellow Sea and even better received The Chaser. And the movie was Official […]
Festival Film Review: Ryoo Seung-wan’s Veteran
It really didn’t feel like a new film festival. We were opening in a venue that felt familiar, a lot of the faces front of house and on stage were known to the audience, there were plenty of photographers and TV cameras as well as a red carpet outside, and the bar upstairs was full […]
Event news: Ryoo Seung-wan talking East Asian cinema with Chris Fujiwara
As part of the London East Asian Film Festival, director Ryoo Seung-wan will be discussing Asian cinema with Chris Fujiwara. Director Ryoo is over for the screening (with Q+A) of his hit film Veteran which opens the festival on 23 October. And remember that there’s another Korean film screening at the festival: Hong Won-chan’s Office, […]
London East Asia Film Festival – the line up looks really rather good!
It is pretty ambitious to try to sneak in an extra London film festival in between the well established BFI London Film Festival, anchored in the first weeks of October, and the early November London Korean Film Festival. But that’s what is happening with the London East Asian Film Festival. And when you consider that […]
Welcome to the London East Asia Film Festival
Note: If you are looking for details of the 2016 London East Asia Film Festival, click here. This article as about the 2015 festival. A new Film Fest is coming to town. Slotting neatly in between the BFI London Film Festival and the KCCUK’s London Korean Film Festival, the initial edition of the London East […]