Ahn Sung-ki

KCC Screening: Mandala

Post image for KCC Screening: Mandala

by Events Editor on 22 July, 2018

in Event Notices | Film

The fifth screening in the Rebels with a Cause season: Mandala (만다라) Director: Im Kwon-taek (1981, 112 mins) Cast: Ahn Sung-Ki, Jeon Moo-song, Bang Hee, Gi Jeong-su Thursday, 16 August 2018 7:00 pm @KCCUK | Book tickets Set in contemporary Korea, Mandala follows two rather different characters: Pob-un, a young Buddhist monk who has decided […]

{ 0 comments }

Screening: White Badge + Ahn Jung-hyo Q+A

by Events Editor 18 March 2018
Thumbnail image for Screening: White Badge + Ahn Jung-hyo Q+A

Jeong Ji-yeong’s adaptation of Ahn Jung-hyo’s Vietnam War novel is the third in the KCCUK’s Korean Novels on Screen season of screenings. Director Jeong came to London back in 2010 to talk about this movie. LKL’s write-up can be found here. White Badge (하얀전쟁) Director: Chung Ji-young (1992, 124 mins) Cast: Ahn Sung-ki, Lee Gyoung-young, […]

Read the full article →

Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s The Dream

by Philip Gowman 27 November 2017
Thumbnail image for Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s The Dream

Bae Chang-ho’s The Dream is based on a story from the Samguk Yusa, a story that Yi Kwang-su worked up into a short novel. Although the tale is set in the late Silla dynasty, its message is timeless. The story starts with a weary and impoverished traveller (played by Ahn Sung-ki) trudging through the snow […]

Read the full article →

Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s Whale Hunting

by Philip Gowman 24 November 2017
Thumbnail image for Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s Whale Hunting

Based on a story by long-standing collaborator Choe In-ho, Whale Hunting is one of Korea’s seminal road movies. Hunting the whale, in the dark days of the dictatorship, was symbolic for yearning for things beyond the day-to-day. In Bae Chang-ho’s 1984 movie it represented the search for the things that give life meaning; in a […]

Read the full article →

Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s People of the Slum

by Philip Gowman 20 November 2017
Thumbnail image for Festival film review: Bae Chang-ho’s People of the Slum

Bae Chang-ho’s debut feature, People of the Slum (1982), is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Lee Dong-chul. The film tells the story of a complicated love triangle. Myeong-sook, played by Kim Bo-yeon, lives with her second husband, the idle and dissolute Tae-seop (played by Kim Hui-ra). Living in the same house in the run-down […]

Read the full article →

Brief festival film review: Eoh Woo Dong

by Robert Cottingham 11 November 2016
Thumbnail image for Brief festival film review: Eoh Woo Dong

Lee Chang-ho (이장호) Eoh Woo Dong (어우동, 1985, 110 mins). Review by Robert Cottingham. Eoh Woo Dong translates as “entertainer,” a rough approximation of the duties of 14th-century Korean courtesan Eoh Yoon Chang. After a lifetime “in service,” Eoh Yoon Chang retires to a faraway village. Meanwhile, her powerful father, ashamed of his daughter’s lifestyle, […]

Read the full article →

Festival film review: Love And…

by Philip Gowman 20 November 2015
Thumbnail image for Festival film review: Love And…

Two years ago the revered Korean film critic Tony Rayns asked Moon Sori an awkward question. The question was followed by a sharp intake of breath from the audience who couldn’t believe what they had just heard, and by a few false starts at a response by Ms Moon before she answered fluently. At the final […]

Read the full article →

An introduction to “Love And…” — LKFF’s closing gala film

by Philip Gowman 5 November 2015
Thumbnail image for An introduction to “Love And…” — LKFF’s closing gala film

The London Korean Film Festival’s choice for the closing gala is an interesting one: Zhang Lu’s Love And… (the literal meaning of the Korean title, 필름시대사랑, is “Love of the Film Era”), which only recently opened at the Korean box office. Closing galas over the years have included blockbusters and mainstream movies such as Masquerade […]

Read the full article →

The London Korean Links Awards 2014

by Philip Gowman 3 January 2015
Thumbnail image for The London Korean Links Awards 2014

Our regular unscientific seasonal post which recognises some of the people, books, films and events which made 2014 an outstanding year. Personality of the Year This year there seem to have been more anti-heroes than heroes – examples to avoid rather than emulate. Villains we loved to hate this year have included the reclusive photographer, […]

Read the full article →

LKFF 2014: the conversations

by Philip Gowman 23 November 2014
Thumbnail image for LKFF 2014: the conversations

The London Korean Film Festival is not just about getting acquainted with the latest in Korean movies. It is also an opportunity to meet some of the people behind those movies – actors, directors and producers. Opportunities for engaging with these film professionals vary: for an ever-growing group of aficionados there is the offer of round-table […]

Read the full article →

Festival Film Review: Hwajang / Revivre

by Philip Gowman 17 November 2014
Thumbnail image for Festival Film Review: Hwajang / Revivre

Well, I was right. Ahn Sung-ki confessed in the Q+A which followed the screening of Hwajang that one of his most difficult tasks in portraying Oh Sang-moo, a senior executive in a cosmetics company, was to project certain aspects of being old – of being blocked inside because of the swollen prostate, of being more […]

Read the full article →

Im Kwon-Taek’s Village in the Mist — affairs on an Anonymous Island

by Philip Gowman 29 October 2012
Thumbnail image for Im Kwon-Taek’s Village in the Mist — affairs on an Anonymous Island

Han Su-ok, a young schoolteacher, arrives in an isolated mountain village to take up her first job in an elementary school. As she gets off the bus, the village initially seems deserted, like a ghost town, hemmed in by the high forbidding walls of the surrounding mountains like a prison. You wonder what sort of […]

Read the full article →

White Badge: Korea and the Vietnamese War

by Philip Gowman 13 July 2010
Thumbnail image for White Badge: Korea and the Vietnamese War

In a year that we remember the 60th anniversary of the first post-WW2 US military involvement in Asia, it was a great idea to invite Director Jeong Ji-yeong (정지영) to the UK. Jeong is known for a number of well-received films, including Nambugun, a film which gives a nuanced view of the Korean War from […]

Read the full article →

Korea at War: A Retrospective of Chung Ji-Young’s Films

by Events Editor 16 April 2010
Thumbnail image for Korea at War: A Retrospective of Chung Ji-Young’s Films

Details of a mini Korean film festival in Cambridge. Well worth going to. Friday 23 April & Saturday 24 April, 2010 Robinson College, Cambridge Korea at War: A Retrospective of Chung Ji-Young’s Films To mark the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, Robinson College is pleased to present a retrospective of films […]

Read the full article →

May 18 – surprise hit of the LKFF

by Philip Gowman 18 November 2008
Thumbnail image for May 18 – surprise hit of the LKFF

A review of May 18, a modern historical drama about Korea’s Tiananmen Square incident

Read the full article →