Here’s the full schedule of the London Korean Film Festival 2013 for you to optimise your viewing pleasure in the coming fortnight. Full details on the festival’s official website, www.koreanfilm.co.uk/. Time Title Theme Runtime Venue Screenings in London and Kingston Od = Odeon; Cur = Curzon WE = West End; CG = Covent Garden; PS … [Read More]
Category: London Korean Film Festival (page 9)
The LKFF 2013 Programme is announced
The countdown is on to the 2013 London Korean Film Festival. There’s plenty for everyone, and I’m sure once the detailed timetable is announced it will be difficult to choose your priorities. For me, the film to see is E J-yong’s Behind the Camera. I’ve never yet been disappointed by a film of his, and … [Read More]
Film Festival Highlight: Eungyo – A poet looks into his glass
Korea’s most famous poet, Lee Jeok-yo, is well into old age. He has taken as a student cum in-house assistant an aspiring but not very talented novelist called Seo Ji-woo. A neighbouring high school girl starts takes a cleaning job at the poet’s house, and a connection soon forms between the poet and the young … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Masquerade deserved all the awards it got
It swept the board at the recent Grand Bell awards – best film, best director and best leading actor among them. And for all-round entertainment, the closing film of the London Korean Film Festival 2012 deserved all those awards. Was a uniquely reformist tax policy set by a pantomime performer who was pretending to be … [Read More]
Choo Chang-min and Ryoo Seung-ryong interview: Masquerade – history with a modern voice
Director Choo Chang-min and actor Ryoo Seung-ryong discuss their involvement in Masquerade, exploring the appeal of period drama, the story’s modern relevance, casting well-known and emerging actors, artistic freedom, and the different challenges posed by physically demanding versus more restrained roles. [Read More]
Lee Byung-hun interview: “if you were a king, what would you do?”
Lee Byung-hun reflects on the appeal of Masquerade’s politically open-ended story, balancing humour with seriousness, and the challenges of acting across cultures in Hollywood. He discusses star power versus emerging talent, the value of criticism, and why Korean language and culture remain his strongest creative foundation. [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Spring Snow — on the value of the priceless
Spring Snow, the final film of this year’s London Korean Film Festival, was shown at London’s ICA on November 11. The film falls into a Korean tradition of documentary drama films such as Lee Man-hee’s A Day Off. Kim Soon-ok, played very well by Yoon Suk Hwa (윤석화), is an aging mother and wife. She … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: All about my wife – a perfect date movie
Part of the K-comedy stream of the 2012 LKFF. Im Soo-jeong plays a shrewish wife driving her husband (Lee Seon-gyoon) crazy, causing him to hire a Casanova (Ryu Seung-ryong) to woo her to give him an excuse for divorce. This is a perfect date movie: entertaining, never too demanding but still making you think about … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: The Grand Heist – a lightweight, fun caper movie, but not for grown-ups
If films require a minimum age classification so that youngsters are not harmed by seeing adult material, shouldn’t there also be a maximum age classification system to warn adults that they are going to be watching material designed for juveniles? If The Grand Heist, billed as a Joseon dynasty Ocean’s Eleven (1), had such a … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: One Deranged hour of my life that I will never get back
Sometime you go into a movie not knowing what to expect and come out feeling fulfilled. Sometimes you go into a movie with high expectations and come out feeling disappointed. If I find a movie dragging, I’ll usually give it a chance to pick up. But when I really can’t see that the film is … [Read More]
Director Jung Ji-woo interview: aging, desire and society in Eungyo
Director Jung Ji-woo discusses EunGyo as a way to explore unspoken desires, aging, and social restraint in Korea. He reflects on empathy, casting authenticity, adaptation from literature and manhwa, creative freedom, working with actors, and how human difference and collision drive his filmmaking. [Read More]
White Night pulled from LKFF 2012 programme
Sadly White Night (백야, LeeSong Hee-il 2012), the only queer-themed film on LKFF programme this year, has been pulled at the last minute. According to Otherwhere, the 70 minute feature was inspired by the real life case of a homophobic street assault. The film, which first showed at the Jeonju International Film Fest in April … [Read More]
Festival Film Review: Gabi – a glossy period spy movie with plenty to recommend it
This year’s Korean Film Festival has a focus on period film – the closing gala is Masquerade, and we also have The Grand Heist, I am the King, and Gabi. Gabi is set in the last decade of the 19th Century, at a time when the Japanese and the Russians were competing for influence in … [Read More]
Kim Yoon-suk interview: from The Chaser to The Thieves
Kim Yoon-suk discusses his decision to focus exclusively on film, his collaborations with Na Hong-jin, and the appeal of socially grounded, hardcore thrillers. He reflects on the demands of The Thieves, the limits of TV drama production, and why intense genre films travel more easily than Korean comedy on the international stage. [Read More]
Choi Dong-hoon interview: “a genius storyteller”
Director Choi Dong-hoon discusses his move from acting to full-time directing, his approach to genre cinema, and why character matters more than message. He explains the creative choices behind The Thieves, casting Jeon Ji-hyun and Kim Hye-soo, working beyond heist films, and balancing Korean stories with growing international audiences. [Read More]
Festival Film Review: The Thieves – an exhilarating start to LKFF 2012
What can one say about one of the most popular Korean films ever? It’s slick, it’s got Jeon Ji-hyun and Kim Hye-su; it’s got Lee Jeong-jae, Kim Yun-seok and even Hong Kong megastar Simon Yam. Yes, it’s a real pleasure to combine in one film some of your favourite Korean eye-candy with a couple of … [Read More]