Each year when I come to write this review, I wonder whether Korean culture in the West has reached its high water mark. And every year so far I’ve come to the same conclusion. Korean music and film, TV and food continue to win admirers, and we can expect to see it continue to thrive … [Read More]
Director: Cho Jungrae (조정래)
Festival Film Review: The Singer
As is often the case, I was out of town for the London East Asia Film Festival, so I missed the international premiere of the Director’s Cut of Cho Jungrae’s The Singer. I’m not sure if the previously available version has had a formal international premiere – probably not, given the devastation that Covid has … [Read More]
Interview: Cho Jungrae (The Singer, 2020)
I watched Cho Jungrae’s 2020 movie The Singer earlier this year online, after being told by a friend of the director that it was available on Amazon Prime. It struck me as a fresh take on the pansori movie genre: instead of telling a pansori tale more or less straight like Im Kwon-taek’s Chunhyang, it … [Read More]
London East Asia Film Festival 2021 – the official press release
LEAFF today officially revealed its 2021 programme, with eight Korean movies in its schedule including Yoon Jae-keun’s 2021 thriller Spritwalker as the closing gala. Here’s the list of Korean films, with ticket links and screening times. THE PRAYER (간호중, 2020) Dir. Min Kyu-dong (Official Selection | European Premiere) Fri Oct 22 18:30 @ The Cinema … [Read More]
Festival Film review: Spirits’ 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 Jungrae’s long-term project … [Read More]
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 … [Read More]