The BFI Southbank programme for late October and November 2024 begins with Echoes in Time: Korean Films of the Golden Age and New Cinema, a major new season running from 28 October to 31 December. Programmed by Young Jin Eric Choi and Goran Topalovic, Echoes in Time will focus on two groundbreaking periods in the … [Read More]
Director: Kang Je-gyu
The Korean Wave: Its Past, Present, and Future
This year marks the 30th anniversary of Kim Dae Jung’s (1924-2009) residence at Cambridge. Kim, President of South Korea from 1998 to 2003, was notable for his policies of détente on the Korean peninsula for which he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000. An icon of the Korean pro-democracy movement in the 1970s and … [Read More]
The Korean Film Archive Youtube Channel
Continuing some suggestions of what to do when you’re stuck at home… Many of you will already be aware that the Korean Film Archive has a wonderful YouTube Channel with loads of classic Korean movies, with English subtitles, available for free. Thing is, I’ve never found an index of the channel. So, over the years … [Read More]
A new year gift from the Korean Film Archive
Those nice people at the Korean Film Archive have given us a new year gift, in the form of twenty-one English subtitled classic movies newly uploaded to their YouTube channel. At least two of these have been available on subtitled DVD before (Come, Come, Come Upward and Gingko Bed) but I’m assuming these are new, … [Read More]
Saharial at the Terracotta Festival: My Way
My Way, directed by Kang Je-gyu (Taegukgi) and with a pan Asian cast was the selected opening night film for the Terracotta Asian Film Festival. And whilst the top class cast of Jang Dong-gun (Taegukgi, Friend), Joe Odagiri (Azumi, Shinobi) and Fan Bingbing (Shaolin, Flashpoint) sounded very promising, I had heard from some of my … [Read More]
War Stories: Taegukgi and Welcome to Dongmakgol screen at the KCC
The Korean War started in June 1950, and the Korean Cultural Centre has selected the War as the theme for the two films to be screened there this month. The first, on 12 June, is Taegukgi (태극기 휘날리며, also known as Brotherhood, or even Brotherhood of War), by Kang Je gyu (2004), while later in … [Read More]
K-film blockbuster season on Film 4
I happened to channel-surf over to Film 4 as I switched off the TV last night, to discover they were midway through a Lady Vengeance screening. Checking on their website, the schedule is as follows: Lady Vengeance. Last night, 22:50 Oldboy tonight 23:05 Tale of Two Sisters Saturday 7th 22:45 R-Point Sunday 8th 23:35 Taegugki … [Read More]
How like “Swiri” is “The Way Home”?
That’s the intriguing question posed by Andrew Jackson’s talk at the Sheffield BAKS conference last week. It was a question prompted by a statement by Ahn Sang-gun, a senior figure in KOTRA, the Korean Trade Investment Promotion Agency, and reported in the Donga Ilbo on 5 April 2003: that The Way Home and Swiri are … [Read More]
The 2005 London Korean Film Festival programme
Here is the programme of films that screened in the 2005 London Korean Film Festival. Although this post’s datestamp is May 2005 so that it appears in the appropriate month of this site’s calendar archive, it is actually being uploaded in November 2015 (with subsequent edits), and is being posted for archival purposes. It’s nice … [Read More]