Art13 at Olympia Grand Hall, 28 February – 3 March, is a new international art fair that debuts in London this year. It will have six commercial galleries from Korea, plus galleries from other countries including the UK who represent Korean artists. 28 Feb is the preview day, and the fair opens to the public … [Read More]
Category: Festivals (page 39)
Kimsooja to represent Korea at the Venice Biennale 2013
Kimsooja is an artist whose work has grown on me over the years. When I first saw one of her video works I didn’t spend long in front of it. But each time I saw her work I enjoyed it more, until I was completely enthralled by her Needle Woman videos when I saw them … [Read More]
Exhibition Visit: Purdy Hicks previews new Bae Chan-hyo works; Hanmi focuses on media art – at London Art Fair
At the London Art Fair it was nice to see some new Korean work as well as re-enjoy some pieces which have already been seen in London exhibitions. At Purdy Hicks, Bae Chan-hyo was previewing a new chapter in his Existing in Costume series. His past work has him exploring male / female and east … [Read More]
Korean Art at the 2013 London Art Fair
It’s January, so it’s time to start thinking about the London Art Fair. This 5-day show at the Design Centre in Islington next week “brings together over 100 leading galleries from across the UK and overseas. Museum-quality Modern British art is presented alongside contemporary work from today’s leading artists, covering the period from the early … [Read More]
Hanmi Gallery at the London Art Fair
Hanmi Gallery is the only Korean-owned gallery to be participating at this year’s London Art Fair. Here are the details of what you can expect to find at their stall in the Projects area. Location of Reality Hanmi Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Art Projects at London Art Fair 2013. Focusing on … [Read More]
A Werewolf Boy (늑대소년, 2012) review: tender emotion, predictable path
A Werewolf Boy blends romance, fantasy and Korean melodrama into a warm, gently told story of love and otherness. While beautifully shot and anchored by strong performances, its familiar themes and uneven characterisation prevent it from fully transcending genre conventions, making the film more sweet than truly heartbreaking. [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]
K-film at the BFI London Film Fest: A Fish — mysterious, tantalising and rewarding
What a stunning first film. Park Hong-min is still a graduate student at Dongguk University, but this debut is amazingly confident. A truly mysterious creation which has you wondering throughout what is going on, and when it finishes you want to watch it again immediately to see if it makes more sense the second time … [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]